Judy Shelton has preached an overriding message in recent years: The Federal Reserve has too much power over the economy and needs to be reined in. Shelton, a conservative scholar and adviser to President Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, has described the Fed as “very close to central planning” and asked, “Why do we need a central bank?” She argued in a 2015 commentary that many of the Fed’s actions have “rigged” the economy “in favor of Wall Street and the wealthiest 1 percent,” the Washington Post reported. Part of the solution, she says, is for the nation to move closer to something akin to the gold standard, which the nation fully abandoned in 1971. “We make America great again by making America’s money great again,” Shelton wrote in an essay last year. Shelton is now one of Trump’s leading candidates to serve on its governing board. He said that he intends to nominate her and economist Christopher Waller, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, to round out the Fed’s seven-member board. “The Federal Reserve is not your friend,” she wrote in the Weekly Standard in 2013. “Loose monetary policy is bad for you and for your economic prospects.” Now she advocates for lower rates “as expeditiously as possible,” arguing that the Fed should not hold back Trump’s pro-growth agenda and that the central bank has been effectively subsidizing banks by keeping rates high.
