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Welcome to this week's Market Wrap Podcast, I'm Mike Gleason.
Coming up we'll hear a wonderful interview with Dr. Richard Ebeling, Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. An Austrian economist, Dr. Ebeling calls the alarm about the increasingly dangerous monetary policy our nation has been pursuing -- and how it could ultimately lead to an economic disaster. Don’t miss this eye-opening interview, coming up after this week’s market update.
Well, markets are signaling their approval of President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next Federal Reserve chairman. Last week, Trump nominated Jerome Powell to replace Janet Yellen when her term is up in 2018.
The stock market responded by rallying to new highs. Wall Street is pleased with the Powell pick because he shares the same philosophy as Yellen and other predecessors who have helped inflate stock values with easy money. Powell is expected to continue the same inflationary policies and programs.
That’s a disappointment to sound money advocates. Trump had an opportunity to shake things up at the Fed. He chose instead to go with a conventional, status quo candidate drawn from the Fed’s Board of Governors.
The President would counter that he’s putting his stamp on the central bank by installing a Republican. Jay Powell is nominally a Republican. He will be replacing an Obama-appointed Democrat. But when it comes to monetary policy, party affiliation is a distinction without a difference.
There has long been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of inflationary monetary policy. Republicans and Democrats have slightly different line item spending priorities. But history shows there’s no difference in terms of the overall budget deficits they run up.
Republicans and Democrats are equally committed to papering