Dallas Fed President Says Central Bank Is Under Attack From Ron Paul, Barney Frank

By Vivien Lou Chen and Margot Habiby
Bloomberg
Sep. 29, 2011

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the central bank’s independence is under attack from both ends of the political spectrum in Congress, and he singled out two of the critics by name.

“We are being attacked from the right and from the left, and I don’t see much difference between a certain congressman from Texas named Ron Paul and a certain congressman from Massachusetts named Barney Frank,” Fisher said in response to audience questions after a speech in Dallas. Paul is a Republican and Frank is a Democrat.

Fisher’s remarks are uncommon among central bank officials, who tend to defer to Congress and its members, said Sung Won Sohn, former chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. The Dallas Fed chief is the only member of the Federal Open Market Committee to have run for Congress, losing as a Democrat to Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison twice, in 1993 and 1994.

His comments are “true as a factual matter,” said Sohn, who served as a White House staff economist under Richard Nixon from 1973 to 1974 and is now a professor at California State University-Channel Islands. “But a person in the position of president of a Federal Reserve bank should be careful about what he says and how he says it because the Fed actually reports to Congress and Congress can do anything it wants to the Fed.”

Read More