Power & Market

 A few months ago, just after Boris Johnson had become Prime Minister, I wrote an article addressing the ongoing selection process for the next Governor of the Bank of England, in which I gave my prediction of who the top 5 most likely candidates might be.

Much has changed in the British political landscape since then, including the decision to hold a general election on 12th December. As a result, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid has announced that he will not be making his selection for the next BoE Governor until after the election, to avoid compromising the Bank’s independence by announcing during a “politically sensitive” time.

However, an official shortlist has been delivered to the Treasury, and the 5 names “thought to be” on the shortlist, as reported by the Grauniad, are Andrew Bailey, Minouche Shafik, and Ben Broadbent (who were on my predicted shortlist) as well as Shriti Vadera and Jon Cunliffe (who were not).

I included Vadera as an “honourable mention” in my article, but am admittedly surprised she made it onto the official shortlist, given her reputed “fiery” management style and strong partisan links to the Labour Party. However, bearing in mind the government’s stated intention to make this a diverse hiring process, and their use of the headhunting firm Sapphire Partners which “specialises in diversity and placing women in top roles”, it makes sense that they would have wanted to include her, at least to avoid the shortlist being 80% pale, male, and frail.

Everyone seems to be surprised that former Reserve Bank of India Governor and central banking superstar Raghuram Rajan was not included on the list, having previously been second only to Andrew Bailey in the bookies’ estimations. It’s perfectly true, as has been pointed out, that his failure to be included on the shortlist (or even interviewed) doesn’t necessarily mean he’s out of the race; current Governor Mark Carney was not included in the shortlist to replace Mervyn King in 2013. However, I have long had my doubts about the likelihood of Rajan getting the job, mainly due to the simple fact that (through no fault of his own, mind you) he isn’t British. I imagine this wouldn’t be such an issue in normal circumstances, but current Governor Mark Carney is the first of the Bank’s 120 Governors to have been foreign, and his tenure has been marked by repeated accusations of insufficient familiarity with the British economy. So it’s easy to imagine the pressure that must exist to not give the job to a second full-blown foreigner in a row.

I say “full-blown” foreigner to distinguish Rajan from the person who I personally believe is most likely to get the job, Egyptian-born Nemat “Minouche” Shafik. As I mentioned in my original article, Shafik’s status as a woman of colour would tick all the diversity boxes the government could reasonably hope for, yet she has sufficient “insider status”, both within the British economy and the Bank of England itself, to shield her from the sort of criticism to which Rajan might be subjected, and to be a considerable advantage in its own right. Educated at Oxford and the London School of Economics (two damn fine institutions, in my own entirely unbiased opinion), Shafik is the current Director of the latter institution, and was formerly a Deputy Governor at the Bank of England, having sat on its rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee from mid-2014 to early-2017. During her tenure, Shafik typically voted with the rest of the MPC, making it difficult to isolate her personal views on monetary policy. The only factor I can imagine holding her back would be her reportedly difficult working relationship with current Governor Mark Carney. However, if I were a betting man the research for my original article would have led me to bet on Shafik, and that remains true now that the official shortlist is out.

The only character on the list who I didn’t mention in my original article is Sir Jon Cunliffe, who is currently the Bank’s Deputy Governor for Financial Stability. Cunliffe has held a wide variety of senior civil service positions since 1990, and is currently on the Bank’s Financial Policy and Monetary Policy committees. He was educated at the University of Manchester, with his highest degree being a Master’s in English Literature, which, more than anything else, illustrates Britain’s unique status as a country where you can work in the financial sector with a degree in almost any subject. Cunliffe recently made headlines when he gave a speech arguing that low long-term interest rates put pressure on financial stability, and risk more severe downturns; a potentially welcome sentiment for Austrian ears.

When Mark Carney’s term as Governor comes to an end in late-January, the situation in British politics could potentially be very different: either the Conservatives will win the election and pass Johnson’s EU withdrawal bill, in which case Britain will be out of the EU by February, or Jeremy Corbyn will be Prime Minister, Brexit will be delayed (potentially indefinitely), and this shortlist of candidates might be re-thought or thrown out entirely. For the time being however, this shortlist provides an interesting insight into the priorities and policy goals of Britain’s government and central but doesn’t provide much hope for Austrians.

Can a Roman Catholic be an Austro-Libertarian as well? Christopher Ferrara in a book called The Church and the Libertarian says that one cannot. In Ferrara’s view, Austrian  economists deny that the moral law applies to the economy. Instead, Austrians say, strictly scientific laws govern the economy and these limit what the State or the Church can do. Minimum wage laws, for example, tend to cause unemployment, like it or not.

Ferrara challenges this contention. Economic laws are not absolute but must be subordinated to the moral law. For example, a worker must be paid a “living wage” that enables him to raise a family. To deny this, he thinks, is to reject Catholic Social Thought, and to do that is to put oneself outside the Church.

Tony Flood, who is both a believing Catholic and sympathetic to the thought of Murray Rothbard, who was a friend of his, subjects Ferrara’s book to close examination and finds it lacking.  In his book, Christ, Capital and Liberty: A Polemic.  Flood argues thatAustro-libertarian thought is compatible with the key teaching of the Church,  In contending that it is, Flood draws attention to the writings of the great Jesuit Father James Sadowsky, S.J., a distinguished Catholic philosopher and theologian who was also a Rothbardian in his political philosophy.

Flood analyzes in detail the errors in Ferrara’s book. In one case, for example, Ferrara included in a quotation from Murray Rothbard words that were not Rothbard’s but in fact were from a polemical discussion by Kevin Carson, a writer of different views altogether

Flood has ably shown that Ferrara’s assault on Austro-libertarianism is baseless.

The US federal government is divided up into a variety of institutions, with the three main "branches" of government designed to compete against each other. Theoretically, these three branches were initially thought to place checks on the other branches of government, thus minimizing abuses of power by the federal government overall.

Things haven't really worked out that way. Thanks to the rise of political parties, coordination between the branches — along party lines — has often replaced competition between the branches. Moreover, as political parties vie for the a controlling majority in the various branches, they are loath to limit the power of these institutions lest these partisans limit their own power in the process. Nor do the different branches represent different socio-economic groups in the manner imagined by John Adams in his Defense of the Constitutions.

So weakened had this imagined separation of powers become by the time of the New Deal that Franklin Roosevelt asserted during the days of his court-packing scheme that the various branches of government existed to work together, rather than to mutually obstruct each other. In a 1937 "fireside chat," Roosevelt claimed the federal government is

a three-horse team provided by the Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed. The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government – the Congress, the Executive and the Courts. Two of the horses are pulling in unison today; the third is not.

FDR's point was that the Supreme Court was being obstructionist, and it ought to conform itself to the other two branches of government, since it was the duty of each branch to assist the other branches in "plowing the field."

The fact many people would find this theory remotely plausible speaks to the magnitude of the public's disregard for the notion the division of the federal government into branches was supposed to prevent government action, not facilitate it.

Not All Branches Are Equally Terrible

FDR, of course, is the poster child for claims the presidency has become lopsidedly more powerful than the other branches of government. Through the party structure, FDR was able to dominate Congress, and through the cult of personality that surrounded him, he was even able to intimidate the Supreme Court as well.

But FDR certainly isn't the only example of how the presidency has come to be the driver behind most of the federal government's worst abuses and usurpations of power.

For detailed accounts of these many crimes, the reader may consult Reassessing the Presidency, published by the Mises Institute in 2001.

In it, the authors explore how the presidency has greatly expanded its power at the expense of Congress (of, of course, ordinary Americans).

This has been made possible by both inaction and support from the other branches. For example, except in rare cases, the Supreme Court has tended to defer to the other branches of government — and especially the presidency — when the court perceived both of the other branches were unlikely to oppose the court's decisions on a topic.

Meanwhile, the Congress's danger has mostly manifested itself through inaction and through its deference to both the Presidency and the Supreme Court. Over the past century, Congress has repeatedly handed over its lawmaking authority to the executive branch and to a variety of independent regulatory agencies.

The Rise of the Fourth Branch

This capitulation to the presidency and the administrative state, however, has enabled what has become an essentially independent fourth branch of government. Yesterday, in an article titled "The Deep State: The Headless Fourth Branch of Government," I described how the regulatory and national-security agencies of the executive branch have evolved over the past century to become more or less autonomous in their own right.

These organizations are sometimes collectively called "the deep state," and their are characterized by a lack of responsiveness to the electorate or to any other branch of government.

Although the president is technically the head of these agencies, he can only count on cooperation if there is general agreement among the agencies' personnel that the president's agenda does not threaten them. In other words, the president can often count on cooperation from this deep state to expand the executive branch's power. These same agencies, however, tend to place insurmountable obstacles in the way of any president who might attempt to significantly curtail the powers of the federal bureaucracy.

While the president's formal power is certainly quite vast, the informal power of this permanent bureaucracy is much greater. The agency personnel can usually wait out any president, and if a president becomes too inconvenient, these same bureaucrats can engage in a variety of investigations, indictments, and leaks designed to undermine the president. What they do is often secret, protecting it from public scorn.

The fact many of these bureaucrats have tenured positions, and function largely in the shadows, increases their power further. Even enormous failures on their part — as evidenced in the failure to prevent 9/11, or to "win" the failed War on Drugs — only leads to even larger budgets and even broader prerogatives.

From Worst to Least-Awful

Since the New Deal, and especially since 9/11, I suggest this fourth branch of government has actually become the most dangerous one. Ranking the branches of government from the worst to least bad, it looks like this:

1. The Permanent Administrative State
2. The Presidency
3. The Supreme Court
4. The Congress

The bureaucracy, as we've seen, is dangerous largely because of its permanence and the lack of any means in ensuring accountability. While elected officials come and go, career bureaucrats (military and otherwise) are more or less permanent. Moreover, since the other branches depend on the bureaucracy to enforce the "rules," there is no means of enforcing accountability on the bureaucracy beyond the short term.

The Presidency, on the other hand, is dangerous for both administrative and political reasons. It can use hero worship and mass media to ram through legislation. The President can also issue executive orders, essentially creating new legislation without Congressional approval.

The problem with the Supreme Court stems largely from its exalted position in the minds of voters. Polls show Americans trust the "judicial branch" more than either the Presidency or Congress. Thus, when the Supreme Court hands down its decisions, these decrees are often considered to be indubitable fait accomplis. On the other hand, the court has no means of enforcing its decisions, lessening its de facto power.

And then there is the Congress — the least popular, least respected, and most disorganized branch of the federal government. This is the branch which has the least ability to capitalize on a cult of personality given its lack of any single established figurehead. Moreover, turnover in Congress is higher than most people think. Although some members of Congress serve for decades, most members have tenures that are much shorter. The average tenure for current members is 8.6 years in the House and 10.1 years in the Senate.This means many members of Congress come and go as quickly as the presidents.

So What?

But if we've determined which federal institutions are the worst, the question remains: so what?

Well, this sort of analysis may help us determine which side is the greater threat when observing conflicts within the federal government. It also helps us to see through the rhetoric of political parties who always insist attempts at limiting their guy's power is unconstitutional or inappropriate.

One example of this was Nancy Pelosi's diplomatic trip to Syria in 2007, during which the Speaker attempted to assert some Congressional control over the White House's foreign policy. Vice president Dick Cheney denounced the move, insisting "we don’t need 535 secretaries of state" and claiming Congress should defer to the president on all matters of foreign policy. Cheney, of course, was wrong, and it would be a good thing if Congress spent quite a bit more time "meddling" in the White House's foreign policy agenda. The proper view of this relationship between Congress and the White House, however, is often clouded by partisan loyalties.

On the other hand, during the Trump administration, we've seen the permanent bureaucracy assert itself in its attempts to undermine the presidency, and to protect the deep state's own interests. The House majority has been supportive of this for partisan reasons. But more fundamentally — as a recent New York Times article concludes — this has really been a conflict between the presidency and the deep state. Although the presidency's power is already bloated to dangerous levels, the power of the permanent administrative state is even greater, more unaccountable, and most dangerous of all.

Mere partisan analysis would impel us to overlook this, but by keeping an eye on the relative danger of each branch within the federal government, we may perhaps be more able to identify the worst of the bad guys in each new political controversy.

On Tuesday, Congressional impeachment hearings exposed an interesting facet of the current battle between Donald Trump and the so-called deep state: namely, that many government bureaucrats now fancy themselves as superior to the elected civilian government.

In an exchange between Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Alexander Vindman, a US Army Lt. Colonel, Vindman insisted that Nunes address him by his rank.

After being addressed as "Mr. Vindman," Vindman retorted "Ranking Member, it's Lt. Col. Vindman, please."

Throughout social media, anti-Trump forces, who have apparently now become pro-military partisans, sang Vindman's praises, applauding him for putting Nunes in his place.

In a properly functioning government — with a proper view of military power — however, no one would tolerate a military officer lecturing a civilian on how to address him "correctly."

It is not even clear that Nunes was trying to "dis" Vindman, given that junior officers have historically been referred to as "Mister" in a wide variety of times and place. It is true that higher-ranking offers like Vindman are rarely referred to as "Mister," but even if Nunes was trying to insult Vindman, the question remains: so what?

Military modes of address are for the use of military personnel, and no one else. Indeed, Vindman was forced to retreat on this point when later asked by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) if he always insists on civilians calling him by his rank. Vindman blubbered that since he was wearing his uniform (for no good reason, mind you) he figured civilians ought to refer to him by his rank.

Of course, my position on this should not be construed as a demand that people give greater respect to members of Congress. If a private citizen wants to go before Congress and refer to Nunes or any other member as "hey you," that's perfectly fine with me. But the important issue here is we're talking about private citizens — i.e., the people who pay the bills — and not military officers who must be held as subordinate to the civilian government at all times.

After all, there's a reason that the framers of the US Constitution went to great pains to ensure the military powers remained subject to the will of the civilian government. Eighteenth and nineteenth century Americans regarded a standing army as a threat to their freedoms. Federal military personnel were treated accordingly.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power "to raise and support Armies …" and "to provide and maintain a Navy." Article II, Section 2 states, "The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States when called into the actual Service of the United States." The authors of the constitution were careful to divide up civilian power of the military, and one thing was clear: the military was to have no autonomy in policymaking. Unfortunately, early Americans did not anticipate the rise of America's secret police in the form of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other "intelligence" agencies. Had they, it is likely the anti-federalists would have written more into the Bill of Rights to prevent organizations like the NSA from shredding the fourth amendment, as has been the case.

The inversion of the civilian-military relationship that is increasingly on display in Washington is just another symptom of the growing power of often-secret and unaccountable branches of military agencies and intelligence agencies that exercise so much power both in Washington and around the world.