by John Tamny of RealClearMarkets
In a recent opinion piece on the Federal Reserve for the Wall Street Journal, authors R. Glenn Hubbard, Hal Scott and John Thornton argued that the “Fed must above all maintain its political independence in conducting monetary policy.” What the authors missed is that the Fed has never been non-political or independent, nor was it intended to be autonomous.
The Fed is not an independent body free of political coercion, but rather an institution whose actions have long been dictated by the president and politicians in power. More important, since Congress is empowered through the Constitution “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof,” it’s folly for general defenders of central bank independence to presume that this applies to our own Federal Reserve.
Fed Independence Is an Unconstitutional Myth
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks