Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen will meet on Friday with conservative groups that have criticized her and the central bank, the groups said Wednesday.
American Principles in Action, a conservative political activist organization that opposes the Fed’s monetary policy and favors staking the dollar to the price of gold, announced Wednesday that Yellen would meet with its leadership and with other representatives of right-of-center organizations. Those include the Heritage Foundation, a top conservative Washington think tank, as well as the libertarian Cato Institute, which recently started a center with the specific aim of challenging the Fed on monetary policy.
Steve Lonegan, the long-time New Jersey conservative activist and sometime political candidate who directs American Principles in Action’s monetary policy program, requested a meeting with Yellen after she met with a group of labor activists and liberal think tank members in November.
It is not unheard of for Yellen to meet with groups outside the Federal Reserve system, the government, or the financial industry, although such meetings are relatively infrequent. Yellen’s public schedule, published by the Wall Street Journal, shows that in the past year she has met with the AFL-CIO, the Greenlining Institute, and the auto company Ford, among others.
But Friday’s meeting will be the first at the Board of Governors’ headquarters in Foggy Bottom with activists and scholars openly critical of the Fed’s easy-money policies and regulation of the financial system.
It also comes at a moment when the central bank is under intense scrutiny from congressional Republicans for what they call a lack of transparency.
In particular, legislators are mulling legislation by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would subject the Fed’s monetary policy to an audit by the Government Accountability Office, as well as other bills to overhaul the Fed.
