Election 2012 & The Fed: John Jay Myers wants Chairman to have gas, matches

This week-long Economic Collapse News series will feature three candidates vying for a seat in the House of Representatives and Senate.  Each candidate will provide his take on the Federal Reserve, their pick to replace Chairman Ben Bernanke and their view on monetary policy.  Part two of our series looks at Texas Libertarian Senate candidate John Jay Myers.

Who’s causing the problems in Washington? The Democrats or the Republicans? John Jay Myers, who is running as a Libertarian for the Senate race in Texas, believes both the elephants and the donkeys have their hands in the cookie jar.

The two-party system is the accomplice, according to Myers, whether it is welfare, warfare, the failures of education, skyrocketing energy costs, a paucity of real economic growth and corruption in Washington.

Essentially, for Myers and a lot of the libertarians, including Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, this election is about ending the wars, ending corporate welfare and living your own life without having the government tell you what to do.  As Johnson’s campaign slogan states, “Live free.”

What about the Federal Reserve? Myers believes that even if you have a Libertarian in charge, it may not be enough to actually provide any good to the present monetary system or improve the state of the United States dollar.  To improve the Fed, Myers urges a stronger congress.

“If the President is Obama or Romney, you can be sure that he will be replaced with someone of the same ideology,” explained the senate candidate in an interview with ECN.  “However, they must choose the next chairman from the current board of governors who serve 12 year terms, even having a true libertarian as President might not be enough to do any good. Using their system, which is rigged, we would need to actually have a congress that was willing to alter or abolish the Federal Reserve’s charter.”

Many of those who oppose the Fed’s existence were pleased to hear last week when ECN reported that Chairman Ben Bernanke was considering stepping down in Jan. 2014 – if he is not replaced by a possible President Mitt Romney administration before then.

However, the celebration was short-lived because of the short list of potential replacements, such as Timothy Geithner and Glenn Hubbard, and the knowledge that it doesn’t matter who is really in charge because the system will persist with the status quo.

The Wall Street Journal even reported that Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota told a crowd at University of Minnesota in Duluth that the Fed may not be providing enough stimulus and believes that it has enough room to act.  This notion perturbs many libertarians.

“Given how high unemployment is expected to remain over the next few years, these inflation forecasts suggest that monetary policy is, if anything, too tight, not too easy,” stated Kocherlakota on Tuesday.  “Some observers argue that the Fed has done too much, has been too accommodative.  I strongly disagree.”

In light of these comments, Myers wants to see someone in charge of the Fed that would have firefighters immediately at the Fed headquarters in Washington.

“I am unfamiliar with all of the people who make up the board of governors (from where I would be forced to choose given their charter) so I [cannot] say,” explained Myers when discussing likely candidates to swap Bernanke.  “In a perfect world I would choose a man with a large can of gasoline and a match.”

If the Libertarians had their way with the Fed, what would they do with it?  Similar to what Myers’s fellow libertarians say, he would advocate for the Treasury to be in charge of the nation’s monetary system.

“For the most part our treasury would take up the role,” said Myers.  “We would need to shift to sound money and competing currencies.”

Apparently, living free also includes maintaining a strong currency, permitting citizens to choose a currency they wish to purchase goods and services with and ending an invasive central bank into the country’s economy.  Indeed, the motto of “live free” can also be attributed to something as behemoth as the Federal Reserve System.

Be sure to check out Monday’s interview with Montana Libertarian Senate candidate Daniel Cox. Also, ECN sits down with Michigan Libertarian Senate candidate Scotty Boman on Thursday.