Senate blocks Shelton; Gold bugs cry!

Interesting.

Shelton is almost a full gold bug. But for the right reasons, probably. The gold standard is potentially useful as a way to constrain the Fed from making really bad errors.

But gold, in itself, is not the important thing, it is a reduction in the discretion of the Fed in meeting its mandates.

Importantly, for the Fed to meet its mandates it needs to be politically independent. But the Fed has not always practiced good independence.

A side note on the "Gold Standard."

It’s only a “market” option if everyone’s organically using it. The second you impose it from the top down, it’s just as much a fiat system as we have now—probably with even more vulnerabilities. The gold standard worked 1870-1914 because it was universal. All banks in all countries would take specie, but today we would be acting on our own. The most important feature of money as a medium of exchange is everyone else’s willingness to accept it. Gold is no longer that medium of exchange, so a returning the dollar to gold would scarcely make it less a fiat currency.

Shelton could be just more of Trump, on the one hand; but she could also be a real dissenter from the usual consensus at the Fed, someone who will force the rest of the board to justify their positions.

I can't tell.

She joined the Ben Carson team of Economic Advisors led by Tom Rustici.

She seemed to leave the Carson campaign quite quickly for Trump's. Maybe she was just more aware of how things would go. Maybe she was just opportunist.

I don't know.