Reaganomics Redux

   Look for the president to attempt remaking the Federal Reserve Board in his own anti-regulation ideology.
   He has repeatedly shown his preference for trickle-down economics and less government regulation, based on the theory that tax breaks for the wealthy and major corporations will trickle down to workers and lead to stronger economic growth.
   Eventually. In the long run. Assuming the beneficiaries of the tax cuts actually spend the money and don't just sock it away to increase their own net worth.
   Soon the president may have an opportunity to widen his assault on regulation from his current efforts on the fiscal side of government to  include fresh faces on the monetary side at the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank.
   The current chair, Janet Yellen, has warned that easing government regulations will endanger the economic recovery the nation has enjoyed since the Great Recession nearly ten years ago.
   It's rare for members of the Fed to speak out on political matters, but Yellen did just that at a meeting of the world's major central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo. She noted that memories of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 may be fading, but to succumb to that and dismantle recent financial reforms could be disastrous to the economy.
   The president has been vocal in urging a loosening of government regulations on business, and generally endorses free-market capitalism and its theoretical tendency to find its own balance.
   For many decades, however, economists have insisted that some regulation is essential to help prevent crises or at least encourage a faster recovery.
   Yellen's term on the Federal Reserve Board expires in February, and she told the gathering of bankers that she would not change her opinion on financial reforms that Republicans want to cancel.
   She insisted that stronger financial regulations have helped the economy recover, and should be maintained.
   But such a position is contrary to the president's tendency to favor less regulation, and that could well mean he will choose someone else when Yellen's term expires.
   Couple that with all the other recent government moves to ease or cancel government regulations and controls in virtually every aspect of the American economy, and the question becomes whether this freedom will lead to rapid growth or an equally fast stumble and fall into a serious depression even worse than that of the early 1930s.