And, no, I’m not writing about house ownership type equity. This concerns the Fed’s potentially increasing role in “social equity.”
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board expressed concern about Progressive-Democrats trying to legislate into the Federal Reserve’s mandates the matter of “racial equity.” They’re correct as far as they went, but they based their concern on the Fed’s existing workload and on the question of how to assess “racial equity” in the Fed’s pronouncements and enforce the concept in its controls.
The Editors, though, missed the most important distinction and problem.
Whether or not “racial equity” is a matter to be taken seriously, it’s a political matter only, and so belongs only to the political branches of our Federal government—Congress and the White House.
The matter has no place in any Central Bank, including ours. The Federal Reserve’s function, in particular, is to protect our currency by protecting our economy—by working, under its existing statutory instructions, to maintain stable pricing, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates (which means working to maintain stable pricing, since employment and interest rates fall out of that).
The Fed has no business or place in the political environment.