Judy Shelton

Judy Shelton is an economic advisor to former President Trump and former Trump nominee for the Federal Reserve Board who is best known for her controversial and widely disputed stances on monetary policy. Shelton is a contributor to the Federal Reserve chapter of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

Shelton is perhaps best known for her sharp critiques of the Federal Reserve, going so far as to compare the Federal Reserve to the Soviet Union’s economic planning. She has claimed that the Fed is “almost a rogue agency” and questioned whether it could be trusted to oversee the dollar, despite overseeing the U.S. economy for more than a century. She has also said a “fundamental question” of economics is “why do we need a central bank?”

Shelton has also claimed she didn’t “see any reference to independence in the legislation that has defined the role of the Federal Reserve for the United States….” She has also suggested lowering U.S. interest rates if other nations lower theirs.

During her confirmation hearing for the Board of the Federal Reserve she was called out by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), a Republican, for her repeated calls for the Fed to cut interest rates to prevent the U.S. dollar from strengthening in value relative to other currencies - something Trump has argued. With some Republicans absent because of COVID-19 exposure and other concerns about her nomination, she was not confirmed, but could be if Republicans regain the Senate.

Shelton is widely known for advocating for a return to the gold standard, which the U.S. abandoned in 1971. Doing so would harm the U.S. economy. Shelton has claimed that “Under a gold standard, if people think the paper money printed by government is losing value, they have to switch to gold.” She has also called for a “Universal Gold Reserve Bank” with “potential to become a sort of global monetary authority.” She joined TheGoldStandardNow.org (a project of the Lehrman Institute) as a senior advisor in 2012, and she is writing a book set to be published in October 2024 titled “Good as Gold: How to Unleash the Power of Sound Money.”

Shelton has also advocated for a new Bretton Woods-style conference, saying “if it takes place at Mar-a-Lago that would be great.” She has said countries should agree to tie their currencies to a “neutral reference point, a benchmark” — which she envisages to be a “convertible gold-backed bond.”

She has also said “eliminating federal deposit insurance would restore the essential character of banking,” suggesting that the FDIC, which insures bank deposits, encourages risky behaviors from banks.

In 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis she sat for an interview in which she said “I am so tired of the criticism… even among Republicans” that “Wall Street greed, or predatory lending” led to the 2008 financial crisis.

In a strange interview with Atlas Network, Shelton called Bernard von NotHaus “the Rosa Parks for monetary policy.” Bernard von Nothaus was convicted of counterfeiting in 2011, which the U.S. Attorney said was “a unique form of domestic terrorism.” The FBI claimed that an organization von NotHaus founded, called National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code (NORFED), was intended to mix a private currency, the Liberty Dollar, into the current money of the U.S., thus limiting the reliance on the dollar.

This profile has been updated.