The Best Judgment Of Experts

clipped from www.cashill.com The academics saw central control along scientific principles as a solution to a free and competitive market. At a Columbia University conference in1907, one Frank Vanderlip argued that a competitive, decentralized banking system caused the panic, “one of the great calamities in history.” “Small banks constitute a danger,” he told those gathered at Columbia in arguing for the benefits of European-style banking. Warburg, in fact, had a problem with the whole idea of a free, self-regulating market. He hoped to replace Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” with the “best judgment of experts,” himself high among them. In 1910, Warburg too took up duck hunting on Jekyll Island. They had just the man in mind. From 1914 until his death in 1928 their own Benjamin Strong would preside over the New York Federal Reserve and set the monetary policy for the nation.