Judy Shelton for Fed Chairman

The collapse today of the greenback to a record low of less than a 5,000th of an ounce of gold is a moment to find the right chairman for the Federal Reserve. Our choice would be the monetary economist Judy Shelton, a Trump loyalist whom the 45th president nominated to a governorship of the Fed only to be defeated by mostly Democrats in the Senate and, we suspect, by behind the scenes opposition from the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell.Rarely has such an opportunity knocked twice, we say. Mr. Powell’s term as chairman of the central bank is ending in May, and Mr. Trump has been flailing around for the right resume. The series of editorials of which this is a part was launched after the dollar fell below a five hundredth of an ounce of gold. That was in November 2005. Our editorial was called “The Bush Dollar,” urging President George W. Bush to pay attention to the currency.Since then we’ve issued more than 200 editorials on this head. We’ve kept a weather eye out for someone who would bring to the chairmanship a willingness to examine the Fed’s own record — and assess and, if necessary, end the half century of experience with fiat money, meaning money that is not defined in terms of specie, like gold or silver. We favor a return to a system in which a role is played by the classic monetary metal of gold.Enter Ms. Shelton. The more we’ve thought about this the more she seems like an ideal candidate to open the Fed to change. She has a PhD in business administration. She wrote a book predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, in part over its monetary wreck. She has carried on correspondence with such figures as Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Robert Mundell, Richard Nixon, Jacques de Larosière and, we like to joke, Thomas Jefferson himself.Ms. Shelton, moreover, has served on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She has chaired the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy. She’s written an introduction to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit.” She’s authored as many as 50 or more columns for the Wall Street Journal in respect of these issues. She chaired the Nobel laureate Bob Mundell’s annual retreat for economists.That but touches on Ms. Shelton’s resume. It also includes the fact that she was an adviser to President Trump’s campaign in 2016. When he nominated her for a Fed governorship, she would have prevailed against her — and Mr. Trump’s — foes in the Senate had not Senator Grassley been exposed to the Covid, missing a vote for the first time in his long and distinguished membership in the upper house. One of the things that we’ve picked up in occasional conversations with Ms. Shelton is that she appreciates both the economic and moral questions in respect of money. She likes to say, as she told the Senate Banking Committee in 2020, that she wants a money that works for everyone, high and low and in between. She doesn’t seem to be, as far as we can tell, concerned with titles. She aspires to a role in reforming our monetary system. Which brings us back to the Fed. The dollar’s plunge in terms of gold underscores the stakes. While Mr. Powell’s term as chairman ends in four months, he could stay on as a Fed governor to complete his term which ends in 2028. If so, Mr. Trump would have to pick as a new chairman one of the Fed’s current governors — or whoever fills the seat to be vacated by Governor Stephen Miran on January 31. Ms. Shelton would be an excellent choice.

Judy Shelton for Fed Chairman

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