Three Links

While we’re assured by the financial press that the Fed is full of Very Serious People, it’s alarming how clueless some members of the Fed seem to be about the current operations of the central bank. The latest example is Neel Kashkari’s take that the injections into the repo market have no impact on equity pricing.

That there are inherent benefits in diversity is a common article of faith in our democratic/populist times. We hear it in and about universities, businesses, politics, entertainment, etc. Typically, though, we hear about it in terms of forcing more diversity on those whose diversity in a particular dimension doesn’t measure up to someone else’s arbitrary standard.

This week, Donald Trump formally nominated Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller for vacant governorships on the Federal Reserve. Waller, the Vice President of the Richmond Fed, is widely viewed as a standard Fed nominee with the reputation of being a “dove” who has criticized recent interest rate hikes.

It is Judy Shelton who is particularly interesting.

[Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. By Jonathan Rodden. Basic Books, 2019. 313 pages.]