Congress made the Federal Reserve independent of the executive branch to keep presidents from manipulating interest rates to win elections. But the Fed is not independent of Congress regarding monetary policy or anything else. Congress has the authority—indeed a duty—to discipline a mismanaged Fed. While it will likely take presidential pressure to get Congress to act, Congress, not the president, should be demanding Fed accountability for protecting taxpayer interests. Recent Fed decisions have cost taxpayers hundreds-of-billions of dollars and yet the Fed’s mistakes have mostly been ignored by Congress and the mainstream press.
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