The Facebook Dollar
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
It’s far from the monetary reform for which we’ve been plumping. But the Federal Reserve has just launched an official page on Mark Zuckerberg’s Web site, and at first glance it looks like the Fed is entering new territory. The lead item, as of our last check, is a biographical note in respect of the chairman, Janet Yellen. The first comment on it is about how if a person mounts a protest onto property of a Federal Reserve Bank, the bank will “instruct the police” to arrest him. “Proof,” the commenter says, “that they own private property.”
“If she had a real job she would have been fired long ago,” writes another commenter about Mrs. Yellen. “Can’t keep being wrong and not doing what you say you are going to in a real job [and] not suffer consequences.” Another demands: “When are you going to stop the FRAUD of counting the debt based credit generated by the Fed and the banking system as being a U.S. legal tender money?” Writes another: “Congrats, Knuckleheads, on creating, inflating, and perpetuating the largest asset bubble in history.”
Things fizz along like that for hours, interspersed with the occasional expression of appreciation for the Facebook page of the Fed. We see it as yet another feature of what these columns call the “verbal dollar,” a system in which our currency, untethered from gold or any other specie, is constantly defined by talk, talk, talk, interspersed with predictions and testimony and caveats and explanations by the governors and the regional bankers and the economists they employ. Who’s to stop them since Congress abandoned its definition of the dollar?
The comments remind us of a story that Jeb Hensarling, now chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (which oversees the Fed), told on a visit some months ago to New York. He told of stopping, at a 7-11 in his home district in Texas, to buy a quart of milk and being met, when he commented on the price, by a lecture by the cashier on the follies of Mrs. Yellen. A commenter on the Fed’s new page suggests: “When we get one million likes, we will not raise the Fed funds target rate for the next half year.”
It would be nice, in any event, to think that out of the Facebook dollar will come further illumination of the need for monetary reform of the original intent kind — something that could yet become possible. This was marked the other day by economist Judy Shelton, who is predicting that Donald Trump’s focus on exchange rate manipulation could open up a serious discussion. Particularly with the likes of Paul Ryan as Speaker and Kevin Brady and Mr. Hensarling helming key committees. What an irony — Facebook likes the gold standard.