The Fed’s Future Is Political

If confirmed to the board of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore would jeopardize the Fed’s hard-won reputation for fairness and independence. At the same time, his confirmation — or even the debate over it — may be a sign of the inevitable return of monetary policy to the center of American politics.

A longtime conservative pundit, Moore has been an unwavering supporter of President Donald Trump and an outspoken critic of the Fed in general and Chairman Jerome Powell in particular. Nonetheless, and despite opposition from both the left and right, Moore seems to be off to a better start than Trump’s previous picks. Moore’s confirmation would not just install a proponent of conservative supply-side economics at the Fed — it would also embolden progressive support for modern monetary theory, or MMT, which argues that Fed independence is a fiction.