Today, The Washington Post reported on APP’s Jackson Hole Summit and the growing movement among conservatives concerned about the Fed’s monetary policy:
They converged last week on a red barn here in the shadows of the Grand Tetons, a small but passionate group of free-market thinkers and conservative activists hoping to convince the Republican Party that the Federal Reserve is ruining the economy.
That message is easily lost amid the latest Iowa poll numbers, the heated rhetoric over immigration and the megawatt personality of billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump. It has been six years since the end of the Great Recession, and the visceral outrage from the financial crisis that propelled former congressman and “End the Fed” author Ron Paul’s run for the White House has faded. No one is threatening — as then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry did in his last presidential bid — “ugly” treatment for the staid leader of the central bank. The economy in general, never mind the Fed, has taken a backseat in this election cycle.
But for the roughly 175 people at the Diamond Cross Ranch, the fight against the Fed has never been more timely: The era of easy money unleashed after the financial crisis appears to be coming to a close as the nation’s central bank prepares to raise its target interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade. It will be a moment of truth, conservatives here say, when the economy crumbles without the central bank’s support and the folly of the Fed’s policies will be revealed.
“The easy part is bringing interest rates to zero,” famed investor and Fed skeptic Peter Schiff told the crowd in Jackson Hole. “Anybody can start taking drugs. Try stopping.”
That is why conservatives staged their first-ever conference here, sponsored by the American Principles Project, timed to coincide with an elite gathering of top central bank officials and international economic policymakers just 10 miles away: to warn the Fed that they are watching and get the rest of the Republican Party to pay attention.
Be sure to read the whole article here.
Paul Dupont is a legislative assistant for American Principles in Action.
