Fed Nominee Shelton Insists British Gold Standard Is ‘New Bretton Woods’

July 15, 2109 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump’s new nominee for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Alan Greenspan protégé Judy Shelton, is putting out yet another fake “New Bretton Woods”—in her case, the old British gold standard! That’s right: The British gold standard which FDR’s administration worked throughout the 1930s to help the Ibero-American countries get off, so they could help the United States promote FDR’s Bretton Woods system, is put forward by Shelton as a “new Bretton Woods.” Shelton’s would, instead, be the destruction of what is left of Bretton Woods—the dollar’s reserve status as a potential source of development credit.

Not only is Shelton a former head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); she’s the first open British gold standard advocate nominated to the Fed since her mentor, Greenspan. In Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation blog posts, she also advocates the creation of (presumably private) digital currencies to “compete with national currencies.” And, by a recent sudden conversion, she advocates further lowering of interest rates.

In August 2018 Shelton wrote “The Case for a New International Monetary System” for the Spring/Summer issue of Cato Journal on how the United States as the dominant monetary power, unilaterally returning to the gold standard, would create a “new Bretton Woods” and stop “currency manipulation” by other countries (which she did not name). Treading on readers’ ignorance, Shelton calls the original Bretton Woods a return to the gold standard after “competitive devaluations” of the 1930s.

Shelton wrote: “A modern version of this approach—one that permits the issuance of virtual currencies in tandem with government-issued currencies, adapting legal tender laws to permit healthy currency competition—should be put forward.

“The United States is the world’s largest holder of official gold reserves. Comprising 8,311.5 tonnes or 261 million troy ounces, those reserves are carried at a book value of roughly $11 billion. Notably, the market value is significantly higher at $345 billion (based on the London Gold Fixing for Sept. 30, 2016).

“In proposing a new international monetary system linked in some way to gold, America has an opportunity to secure continued prominence in global monetary affairs.... Gold has historically provided a common denominator for measuring value; widely accepted at all income levels of society, it is universally acknowledged as a monetary surrogate with intrinsic value.

“Speaking in February 2017, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan defined gold as the ‘primary global currency’ and further added, ‘We would never have reached this position of extreme indebtedness were we on the gold standard, because the gold standard is a way of ensuring that fiscal policy never gets out of line.’ To confront U.S. indebtedness, we need to restore fiscal discipline and sound money through gold convertibility.

“We make America great again by making America’s money great again,” she concluded.

President Trump is here bargaining with the British devil to gain support in the Fed for lower interest rates—a policy Shelton just recently adopted in order to get nominated.