- Today Janet Yellen was up on Capitol Hill, it was the first of her 2-day testimony
- She was before the U.S. Senate today; tomorrow she will be testifying before the House of Representatives
- She talks about monetary policy; we have a bunch of Senators and Congressmen who engage in political grandstanding
- To me, a lot of the people asking Janet Yellen questions are really just trying to speak for sound bites for the media, trying to score brownie points for their constituents
- One senator had to make some comment about global warming – do you think global warming is one of the things the Fed considers when it sets monetary policy?
- Elizabeth Warren is trying to get Janet Yellen to criticize the Trump administration’s efforts to pull back Dodd-Frank
- Because she believes it was the bank that caused the financial crisis
- She doesn’t lay any of the blame at the foot of Congress or the Federal Reserve or the artificially low interest rates
- She thinks it was just Wall Street greed that blew up Wall Street and that the reason we haven’t had another financial crisis was because of the great legislation Dodd-Frank
- And that somehow, if any bit of that is rolled back, it’s going to unleash another wave of rampant Wall Street speculation and blow up the economy all over again
- Probably one of the dumbest comments from one of the senators is why we need more minorities on the Federal Reserve
- The senator commented to Janet Yellen that we needed more African Americans on the Fed because they represent a significant percentage of the population, of the work force, and they need some representation at the Fed
- I’m thinking, “What is this guy talking about?”
- Do you have to be black to conduct monetary policy on behalf of other blacks?
- Does that mean that only whites can conduct monetary policy for whites?
- What is black monetary policy?
