The Fed's one great success

Jörg Guido Hülsmann is senior fellow of the Mises Institute and author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism and The Ethics of Money Production. (See my review of the latter here.) He teaches in France, at Université d'Angers. In a commentary on the alleged independence of the Fed, he writes:

The Fed has had one great success: it is by far the largest funder of academic research in monetary and macroeconomics, employing hundreds of economists, financing conferences and seminars, providing paid consultancies, and so on. Is it any wonder that the majority of academic monetary and macroeconomists support the status quo?

By this he is referring to the 270 economists who have signed an "open letter" supporting the Fed's independence from serious audits. According to this letter, "Economic theory and a massive body of empirical evidence provide strong support for the independence of central banks in their conduct of monetary policy."

How can an institution be "independent" when it was created and is sustained by politicians? As Hülsmann notes, "A government bureaucracy that cannot function unless it is shrouded in secrecy and is not held accountable to the elected representatives of the people has no place in a free society."

I like Gary North's suggestion:

I, for one, do not trust Congress to be in charge of monetary policy. But I do not argue that the Federal Reserve System should maintain its independence from the Federal government. I maintain that it should be made completely independent of the Federal government: cut loose and left to fend for itself, just as the Second Bank of the United States was in 1836. It went bust. (emphasis added)

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