Yanis Varoufakis

There's no such thing as an apolitical decision.

Who sets interest rates is a political decision.

And, you know, you have a class conflict.

You have debtors and you have lenders.

When you increase the interest rate, you favor one at the expense of the other.

So it's a political decision.

Now...

The gist, however, of it is, remember, the Federal Reserve Bank is not, it's not even a state bank.

It belongs to Wall Street.

And not just formally, but in terms of, you know, when they speak of the independence of the central bank, independence from whom?

Independence from Congress.

Independence supposedly from the president, but not independence from J.P.

Morgan or the Bank of America.

So dependence on the bankers whom they're bailing out when the bankers' bets go awry.

So personally, I don't have much time for independence, the independence of the central bank.

Once upon a time, there wasn't even this discussion.

I'm old enough to remember a time when no central bank was independent.

The Bank of England was bound by its relationship with the British government and so on.

What we now have, however...

It's not that Donald Trump agreed with people like me and wants to democratize the Federal Reserve and take it away from the bankers.