Like many of you, I've been watching the election with keen interest. No matter your party affiliation or who you're voting for, you understand that 2016 is one of the most important elections we've ever faced.
In truth, who becomes the next president of the United States isn't important to me.
I'm watching the election for one reason.
The next president will nominate the next chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System - in reality the most powerful person in America and the world.
Here's my candidate for the job...
While it's highly unlikely, for a host of political reasons, that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would campaign on their choice for the next chair of the Fed, they should.
Don't Miss: Voters unhappy with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are clamoring for a third option. They may not know it, but they already have one...
A presidential contender's nominee to be the next Fed chair would speak volumes about the prospective president's economic platform.
And the right economic platform to fix what's wrong with the American economy, that makes banks safe engines of capital allocation, that rewards entrepreneurship, creates jobs and, more importantly, careers, dramatically narrows the income and wealth gap, and makes a comfortable retirement possible again, would deliver the election emphatically.
There's someone out there who should be the Fed chair nominee candidate, who would sway the electorate and be embraced by Americans, someone who we can trust holding the office of the most powerful person in the world.
My Nominee for the World's Most Powerful Banker
My nominee is someone who's a native of the great state of Kansas. Someone who has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Kansas and a J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law.
It's someone who's an academic, who was the Dean's Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Someone who served as assistant secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Was senior vice president for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange. Was a commissioner and acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and who, while she was an academic, served on the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Banking Policy.
In fact, it is the former chairperson of the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair.
The best part is, she's available.
Sheila Bair would make an exceptional Federal Reserve chair. As an architect and engineer of the bailout of America's biggest banks (because they had to be bailed out, there was no other economic option at the time) during the 2008 crisis and tireless trooper fixing and closing busted banks across the country, she knows everything there is to know about America's banks.
And that's what the Federal Reserve System is. It's a private central bank.
She knows how the Fed coddles its constituent "too big to fail" banks that own the Fed and how dangerous that is.
She's an advocate of less-is-more regulation, not over-encumbering banks with thousands of pages of regulation designed for them to get around, but advocates black and white rules and regulations that by their simplicity make banks more transparent and safe.
Too Big a Job for a President
The chairperson of the seven-member Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, as are all the governors, is nominated by the president of the United States, and all have to be confirmed by the Senate.
While the chair serves a four-year term and is a governor, governors serve 14-year terms and can't be "fired" by the president. But they can be persuaded to resign.
It wouldn't be easy for a nominated and confirmed Sheila Bair to take control of the Board of Governors and enact the kind of changes the Fed should be subject to, but she could do it with the support of the American people.
What's at stake is fixing what's wrong with the American economy, making banks safe engines of capital allocation, rewarding entrepreneurship, creating jobs and careers, dramatically narrowing the income and wealth gap, and making a comfortable retirement possible again.
An American president can't do that; it's too big a job. But they could with the backing of a strong, thoroughly qualified Federal Reserve chair and its Board of Governors.
The next president of the United States will be the one who has the smarts to lay out their economic platform for the country to be architected and executed by their choice for who will set policy and the right American agenda at the Federal Reserve.
Next, I'll tell you what needs to be fixed, and the best way to go about fixing it.
Up Next: Most people remember the Bill Clinton economy as a "boom" they'd like to see again. But that's a false and dangerous myth. Read more...
Follow Money Morning on Facebook and Twitter.
About the Author
Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.
The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.
Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.
Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.
Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.
Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.