When LBJ Assaulted a Fed Chairman
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07/31/2018Ryan McMaken
In his column today, Ron Paul mentions that those who insist the Fed functions with "independence" tend to forget — or at least not bring up — the numerous historical episodes in which the Fed did not exercise any such independence.
As an example, Paul mentions the time President Lyndon Johnson
summoned then-Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin to Johnson’s Texas ranch where Johnson shoved him against the wall. Physically assaulting the Fed chairman is probably a greater threat to Federal Reserve independence than questioning the Fed’s policies on Twitter.
For those unfamiliar with the episode, I thought it might be helpful to look at some of the historical context surrounding the situation. In his book The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, Sebastian Mallaby writes:
https://mises.org/wire/when-lbj-assaulted-fed-chairman
