Madeline Sponsler, FISM News

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The Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday approved Judy Shelton‘s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board in a party-line vote, delivering a win for President Donald Trump and his efforts to install a political confidante in a key economic policy-making role.

Shelton, a conservative economist who has argued the nation would be better off returning to the gold standard and as recently as 2017 criticized the Fed‘s power over money and financial markets as “quite unhealthy,” drew criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans during a contentious hearing in February.

That was before the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin, and the Fed responded by slashing interest rates to zero, buying trillions of dollars of bonds, and rolling out an unprecedented set of credit backstops that give the Fed a bigger footprint than ever in U.S. financial markets.

An economic advisor to Trump during his 2016 campaign, Shelton would be one of 19 interest-rate-setters at the Fed.

The 13-12 vote in favor of her nomination came despite a stormy confirmation hearing in mid-February when the former Trump campaign adviser was characterized by some among the committee’s Republican majority as outside the mainstream of economic thought.

Her nomination now advances to the full Senate.

Sourced from Reuters