Jason Furman

Even separate from the debt, every president, every political leader is tempted to maximize things in the short run, even at the expense of the long run.

And again, a lot of evidence from a lot of countries, including the United States, is when you do that, you just end up with more and more and more inflation and you don't even do better on unemployment.

So because of these

what economists would call time consistency problems, how you want to behave today versus the future, it's much better to tie your hands as a politician, tell the central bank, make laws that you can't change what they do, and you'll end up getting better outcomes for yourself when you do that.

Kevin Warsh is a friend.

I think he's a terrific choice, and I very much hope that he is confirmed.

He's been very critical of the Fed.

Some of it is not about its core monetary policy.

He, for example, thinks they've been too political in talking about issues like climate change.

I agree with that a bit.

And by the way, I hope Kevin Warsh is not political and supporting President Trump's agenda.

He shouldn't support or oppose the president's agenda.

He should be neutral on it and stick to his knitting.

He's been critical within monetary policy, but the Fed engaging a lot of quantitative easing, dramatically expanding its balance sheet by buying a lot of assets.

government debt, mortgage debt.

He wants to reduce that.

There, I think he's going to have to proceed very slowly.

If he moves quickly on that, it will really destabilize markets.

The Fed has tried to do it twice before and basically failed in that goal.

And