Austan Goolsbee

It's literally just...

Can the sitting government order the central bank to change the interest rates according to what they want in the moment?

That's the sense in which the central bank needs to be independent from the government.

when determining monetary policy.

If they aren't, before I was ever at the Fed, I believe strongly in Fed independence, and that's virtually unanimous among economists, not based on theory for some of them.

Some people it is on theory, but for most people, it's just look out the window at countries where they don't have that kind of independence.

Inflation comes roaring back.

Inflation comes roaring back.

Of course it does.

If you knew, that's what would happen.

And that's why it's important.

If you want inflation to go up, this is the perfect way to do it, is make it so the sitting government can say, hey, we want the rate to be lower, lower, lower.

That ends in tears.

I mean, yeah, that backfires.

Well, I saw yours, so you gave him a B on the economy and A-plus on independence.

right?

Correct.

I consider Jay Powell a first ballot Hall of Fame Fed chair.

And every Fed chair's got stuff that went wrong and stuff they did well.

And the biggest knock on his tenure as chair is the Fed was slow coming off the block as inflation started back up.