There are currently two vacancies on the powerful board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Those vacancies have persisted since the Obama administration. Obama thought Hillary Clinton would win the election in 2016 and fill the seats with reliable global elitists. Instead, Trump won and had the vacancies handed to him on a silver platter. Taking into account retirements and resignations of other governors, Trump has appointed three of the sitting governors (Michelle Bowman, Randal Quarles and Richard Clarida) and promoted sitting governor Jay Powell to chairman. The only governor not appointed or promoted by Trump is Lael Brainard. And the two vacancies remain! Trump will end up exerting more control over the composition of the Federal Reserve Board in a shorter period of time than any president since Woodrow Wilson, who appointed the first board when the Fed was created in 1913. Trump got shot down when he nominated Herman Cain and Steve Moore to fill the two remaining vacancies. But he’s back with two outstanding expected nominees in Christopher Waller, research director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Judy Shelton, the U.S. director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. According to this article, both Waller and Shelton have much smoother paths to confirmation than Cain and Moore. Shelton is particularly interesting because she has a Ph.D. degree. The absence of a Ph.D. hurt Cain’s and Moore’s chances. Shelton has also been previously confirmed by the U.S. Senate (for her existing position). A prior confirmation always makes a subsequent confirmation more likely, assuming no new derogatory information emerges. Best of all, Shelton is an advocate for the consideration of gold prices in monetary policy deliberations. She will not be able to implement a new gold standard from her position as a Fed governor, but simply getting some intelligent views on gold inside the board room at the Fed would be a major step forward in the return to a sound international monetary system. Think of Shelton’s confirmation as one small step for gold, one giant leap for a sound economy. Institutional investors can schedule a proof of concept with the world’s first predictive data analytics firm combining human and artificial intelligence with complexity science. Check out Jim Rickard’s company at Meraglim Holdings to learn more.