Judy Shelton holds highly controversial economic views, and the Senate rejected her nomination to the Federal Reserve Board at the time; now she has been hired as an advisor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The Treasury Department stated that Shelton will advise Bessent on exchange rate policy.

Shelton is not a China specialist.

In 1988, she wrote "Money Meltdown," advocating for a unified international monetary system; the following year she published "The Coming Soviet Collapse."

Before joining the Treasury Department, Shelton worked at the free-market think tank the Independent Institute, and earlier she served as a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

She holds a doctorate in business administration from the University of Utah.

The Treasury Department will announce later this Friday: "Throughout her career, she has long focused on analyzing domestic monetary and financial conditions in various countries, and how these factors affect exchange rates."

In 2019, Trump nominated Shelton to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, but a bipartisan group of senators (including all Democratic senators and a few Republican senators) rejected the nomination.

The controversy centered on her views on Federal Reserve independence, her support for the gold standard, and her questioning of whether the United States needs a central bank at all.

This appointment comes at a time when senior personnel at the Treasury Department are in a state of turmoil.

A recent media report counted that as of the end of August, seven Senate-confirmed Treasury officials had departed, and only one of those positions has been filled so far.

Bessent recently appointed former Jefferies chief market strategist David Zervos as an advisor, with the same title as Shelton.

Neither Shelton's nor Zervos's appointment requires Senate approval.