The Scandal of the Dollar

The thing that sticks with us from the latest drama at the Federal Reserve is that none of it focuses on the real scandal — the collapse of the value of the dollar. The latest dip was triggered by news over the weekend that the Justice Department has a criminal probe into the Fed chairman’s handling of the Fed’s headquarter’s renovation. When news of that broke, the value of the dollar fell over the weekend to less than a 4,600th of an ounce, its record low.The renovation of the Fed headquarters that has caught the administration’s eye is shocking. The renovated building was envisioned to feature “new rooftop garden terraces, skylights, and ornate water features” and a “new elevator system” that whisks board members directly to their “VIP dining suite,” the Post reports. The basement would host a private art collection, the Journal says; the roof would sport two Italian beehives.The particulars, if any, in the probe of Chairman Jerome Powell are not yet public. A Justice Department spokesman says that the attorney general has “instructed her U.S. attorneys to prioritize investigating any abuses of taxpayer dollars.” The probe into Mr. Powell, including what the Times calls an “analysis of Mr. Powell’s public statements and an examination of spending records,” was launched by the U.S. Attorney at Washington, Jeanine Pirro. Mr. Powell calls the probe “unprecedented” and “a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.” Earlier, when Mr. Powell came under criticism from the Trump administration for potentially breaching a local planning ordinance during the renovation project, these columns had marked Mr. Powell’s predicament. The idea of “attacking the Fed for a failure to comply with the National Capital Planning Act seems a little like nailing Al Capone on federal income-tax charges,” we were told then by the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, James Grant. We took him to be marking the scale of the Fed’s policy errors and mismanagement of the dollar of which the bank was created to serve as a steward. The potential planning act violation comes across as picayune.Plus, too, one could argue, a criminal probe over Mr. Powell’s handling of the renovation project — glaring though the cost overruns may be — misses the bigger picture when it comes to the central bank’s performance and role in America’s economy. When the Fed was created in 1913, America was on the gold standard and a dollar’s value was defined in law as a 20.67th of an ounce. Aye, the currency’s fall since then, there is the scandal. The Fed’s faults, including its lack of accountability to the voters, can be seen as structural, stemming from the effort to create a purportedly independent agency above the political fray. An independent Fed is not about cost overruns. It’s a constitutional violation. A substantive reform effort would require the creation of a monetary commission to address the bank’s performance and help Congress to map a path back to honest money.Such a commission was, in recent elections, a feature of the GOP national platform. We would have thought that such a project — a monetary system to which gold has returned — would have been a natural for President Trump and his “golden age.” Instead he is caught in the undertow of lawfare and seems intent on pursuing his goal of a weaker dollar. It’s hard to think of any course of action less likely to bolster America’s long-term prosperity.

The Scandal of the Dollar

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