Sarah Palin for the Fed?

It happens that Mrs. Palin’s demarche coincided with a piece in the Financial Times by the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, suggesting that a new international monetary system centered on the major currencies “should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.” The FT is such a Keynesian bastion that the Journal likened Mr. Zoellick’s mentioning gold in its pages to mentioning Sarah Palin’s name at the Princeton Faculty Club. The FT issued an editorial attacking its own op-ed piece, while Mr. Zoellick’s scoop so startled the New York Times that it brought in no less a heavyweight than James Grant of the Interest Rate Observer to write a piece on the virtues of the gold standard.

Alone amont general interest publications, the Drudge Report has been fronting the gold price almost daily. And now the Times itself is out with its a story about how the Fed’s quantitative easing has been a disappointment. It may have, as the Times puts it, “pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates,” but “those benefits have been surprisingly small.” Will any of this bring some humility to the Fed and its chairman? It will be something to watch for in his first big press conference Wednesday. No doubt it will be one of the most crowded press conferences in recent memory, and there will be lots to ask about. But one of the questions will be how in tarnation Mrs. Palin figured it out so far ahead of everyone else.

Sarah Palin for the Fed?