As long as we're making changes, do we need to reform

[InkAddict]

how Federal Reserve board members are appointed and the length of their term of office?

Consider this little history of how officers of a high-level executive controlling entity over public utility services in Ohio were chosen:

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/moneypolitics/2007/councilcreated.html

In 1911, Ohio began regulating telephone, electric, gas, and water companies, through a three-person commission appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate. There was no Nominating Council.

By the 1970s, the Commission had stopped regulating. Governor Jim Rhodes, whose political base was the coal industry and electric utilities, appointed commissioners who were certain to approve whatever the electric utilities wanted.


with


http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/default.htm

The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. One term begins every two years, on February 1 of even-numbered years. A member who serves a full term may not be reappointed. A member who completes an unexpired portion of a term may be reappointed. All terms end on their statutory date regardless of the date on which the member is sworn into office.
The Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the Board are named by the President from among the members and are confirmed by the Senate. They serve a term of four years. A member's term on the Board is not affected by his or her status as Chairman or Vice Chairman.



Obviously, this new and apparently right-sided only meeting of the Fed next week must portend the next step of what Klein identified as Friedman's legacy system of crisis opportunism. Nothing these guys do has ever been about resolving the problems faced by the middle and lower socioeconomic groups of any country in which they've ever meddled. Will it matter much who holds the power of legislation, executive administration, or justice in this country when others are actually setting the policies of the pursestrings? They're just going to let them have-at America, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office, Congress, or the Supreme Court, aren't they?

[Clear Blue Sky]

1. Why did things change from winner take all to proportional?

That's a big part of the problem.