On Monday Donald Trump met with John Allison the former CEO of the BB&T and former CEO of the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute.

It has been suggested that Allison might be in the running to become new US Treasury Secretary.

Allison is widely known to be an staunch advocate of deregulation of the banking sector and in favour of a rule-based monetary policy. Many had taken his support for a rule-based monetary policy to mean that he favours a gold standard.

However, Allison ultimately would like to see a Free Banking system in the US, but also acknowledges that that is not realistic anytime soon. Instead watch what he says on this interview on Fox & Friends.

“We need discipline, we need somekind of rule, I like the Taylor rule, I like some kind of GDP indexing rule…”

There you go – John Allison who might become next US Treasury Secretary just endorsed Nominal GDP targeting. Further than that Allison obviously strongly supports scaling back Dodd-Frank. Something I also strongly believe in. So concluding, if John Allison supports NGDP targeting and significant deregulation of the financial sector I would – for what it is worth -endorse him as US Treasury Secretary anytime and it certainly helps that I know that he would be strongly against any protectionist measures presently being discussed by the Trump camp.

HT George Selgin. PS If I had been John Taylor I might chosen the title “John Allison just endorsed the Taylor rule” and that would have been equally correct. The point is that we now have a potential future US Treasury secretary who is open-minded and well-informed enough to serious be thinking about NGDP targeting. That is good enough for me.