The Federal Reserve has enormous power over who is president

washingtonpost.com

18 points·william_stranix··5 comments

Wonkblog's headline is pretty clickbaity -- there's really not much to see here.

Technically it's true that the federal reserve has a lot of control over who is elected president. But, contrary to the headline's implication, the article doesn't argue that the fed can intentionally engineer electoral outcomes. The fed controls elections only because monetary policy has a significant effect on the economy, and the nation's economic performance significantly effects presidential elections. Bad monetary policy -> bad economy -> change in political party occupying the white house. On this definition there are many agencies that "have enormous power over who is president."

I suppose the Fed chair and other officials could engineer an electoral outcome by sabotaging the economy, but this seems pretty far fetched and the article does not suggest that this occurs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_F._Burns#Federal_Reserve...

The Fed can also use bad monetary policy to add short-term gains to economic development while sacrificing the long-term health of the economy. So, they can use the tool both ways.

If the title of the article is the point it's trying to make, it failed miserably.

At least it was a somewhat interesting re-cap of the presidency alongside the economy for a young 'un like myself who doesn't remember any of it first-hand.

For a very interesting commentary of the immense power of central banks, I'd recommend the documentary "Princes of the Yen", a film adaptation of Richard Werner's[1] book of the same name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Werner

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