THE FEDERAL RESERVE has heard worse. But when the president complains that it has gone “crazy” by tightening monetary policy, as Donald Trump did on October 10th, Americans fret that another norm is about to be overturned. An independent central bank is considered a pillar of a modern economy; presidents are supposed to mutter any criticisms they might have in private. But is that really for the best? Although Mr Trump’s complaints were not intended to start a high-minded debate, one is overdue.
Operational independence for central banks is relatively new. The principle grew out of work in the late 1970s and early 1980s by prominent economists working in the “rational expectations” school of economic thought, among them Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott, who were eventually awarded the Nobel prize. They considered the implications of people’s ability to look into the future and to anticipate the behaviour of self-interested…
