Who Chooses These Guys?
These guys aren’t actually superheroes, but they do wield some pretty amazing powers—like creating money. The eight meetings they hold per year determine our monetary policy. Here in the United States, the president nominates all seven governors on the Federal Reserve’s board. That board, in turn, is the majority of the 12-member voting powers on the Federal Open Market Committee.
Congress has the final say of approval on the president’s nominees.
While you might say this scenario offers some checks and balances . . . notice also that all the people who hold the power in this situation may not be lifetime policy wonks. Instead, they’re something almost worse: they’re constantly running for the next election. And nothing is better for elections than kick-payments-down-the-road stimulus enabled by loose monetary policy!
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