Interest rates are the price of money. Suppress that price through central bank policy, and capital misallocates on the same logic as rent control suppresses housing supply. Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes and a presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, made that case directly at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, telling Fox News Digital that the Federal Reserve's practice of managing interest rates amounts to "a form of rent control."
The Fed and the price signal
Forbes' critique of the central bank rests on a single premise: the Fed's proper role is preserving the integrity of the dollar, not manipulating interest rates to steer economic activity. The idea that prosperity causes inflation, and that a fast-growing economy must be cooled, he called "absolute nonsense." He noted that most free-market economists recognize rent control distorts markets and raises costs. Interest rate suppression, he argued, operates through the same channel.
The internal threat
Forbes backed President Trump's Mount Rushmore speech, which characterized communism as a domestic threat. He invoked Abraham Lincoln's 19th-century observation that the United States would not be destroyed by foreign forces but by things done internally. He described communism, socialism, extreme leftism, and anti-Semitism as variations of "the same disease."
His strategic complaint about the left was specific. Opponents of free markets, he said, have learned to claim the moral high ground even when their policies have caused mass harm. A free-market argument built solely on prosperity will lose that contest. Liberty and human creativity belong on a moral plane too.
The handheld as proof of concept
Forbes cited the mobile phone as the clearest exhibit for capitalism's productive record. The first handheld cost $3,995, weighed like a brick, and fit in a shoebox. That was roughly 40 years ago. Today the same category of device is a pocket supercomputer that gets cheaper in real terms with each generation, and, as Forbes observed, we take it for granted.
Policy prescription
His prescription for the Trump administration: a new round of tax cuts for individuals and businesses, with the existing exemptions on overtime and tips as a ready-made marketing template. Continue deregulation, he added. Congress may not pass a broader package, but the proposal becomes an electoral issue regardless.
Forbes also commented on New York City, citing what he described as the allegedly only communist member of Congress in the late 1940s as part of a longer pattern of radical politics there. Current voter behavior reflects dissatisfaction, he said, more than ideology.
The rent-control analogy is doing more work than it first appears. Forbes is not simply criticizing the Fed. He is arguing that every price the government fixes, in whatever market, is the same error running through a different pipe.