Power & Market

Ron Paul, Populism, and the Fed

I've been really enjoying David Beckworth's Macro Musings podcast - a nice, conveniently way of hearing some good econ discussions outside of my own personal bubble.

There was an interesting interview with Neel Kashkari who talks about why there has been very little movement within the Fed to really explore NGDP Targeting or pushing up the inflation target, in spite of the large amount of chatter about those topics among academics. He explains that it's because when Fed officials actually talk to real people in communities, in particularly community bankers, any discussion of playing around with inflation is instantly rejected - in part because the public as a whole has so much inherent skepticism and mistrust of the Fed as it stands now. (I'll also note that while I obviously don't like Kashkari's views on monetary policy, his candor and transparency in his Fed role has been great.)

I think this plays back to the success of Ron Paul's libertarian populist campaign, and a good push back to the argument that he never accomplished anything while in office. While it's certainly true that there aren't many legislative achievements to his CV, he effectively used his platform to push the Fed and money into public discourse and effectively won the argument. The impact isn't limited to simply the "public" either. Fed skepticism has become status quo GOP orthodox - to the point where some Republicans on the Hill have been frustrated with Trump's status quo Fed picks. We've also seen legislation advanced by House Republicans to reform the Fed (even though I don't think that highly of them) and Dr. Paul's Audit the Fed Bill has received the support of the majority Republican legislators when it has come up to vote. 

In fact, when you consider that Bitcoin was built on explicitly Austrian origins, it's possible that Ron Paul's impact didn't only help restrain the Fed, but actually inspired very real solutions to government-controlled fiat currency. The grassroots movements to legalize gold and silver at state levels obviously plays into this as well. All in all, by effectively using a populist appeal to engage and educate the public - rather than focus on trying to impose top-down reforms through legislation - Dr. Paul was able to have as large an impact on American monetary policy as perhaps any single legislator since the creation of the Fed. 

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