The Independent Federal Reserve Is on Death Row: Clive Crook

President Donald Trump and his Republican-controlled Congress have already repudiated two of the three commandments that guided US economic policy for decades: Promote international trade; maintain at least some semblance of fiscal control. The third — de—legate monetary policy to an operationally independent central bank — is also now marked for deletion.

Each departure from the pre-Trump consensus on trade, budgets and monetary policy would be damaging in its own right, but the combination of all three involves a quite different order of risk. Disempowering the Federal Reserve just as concerns are mounting about tariff-driven inflation and surging public debt ...