Planet Money
President Donald Trump has been pressuring the Federal Reserve from a few angles. So we wanted to look at other examples of political pressure on central banks, to see what it might mean for us and for the economy.
Enter the watchers. The people who’ve had their eyes trained on central banks all over the world, for years, notebooks out, scribbling down their observations. They’ve been trying to gauge just how independent of political pressure central banks actually are – and what happens when a central bank loses that independence.
Today on the show, we sidle up next to three of the leading central bank watchers, to watch what they’re watching.
Further reading:
– Carolina Garriga’s: Central bank independence and inflation volatility in developing countries
– Lev Menand’s: A New Measure of Central Bank Independence
– Carola Binder’s: Political Pressure on Central Banks
Further listening:
– Lisa Cook and the fight for the Fed
– A primer on the Federal Reserve’s independence
– The case for Fed independence in the Nixon tapes
– A Locked Door, A Secret Meeting And The Birth Of The Fed
Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.
Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.
This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez and Maggie Luthar. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
-
Why Gold? (Classic)
In the past few months, the price of gold has gone way up – even hitting a new high last month at just over $2,400 per troy ounce. Gold has long had a shiny quality…
-
Zombie mortgages are coming back to life
Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a…
-
Inside video game economics (Two Indicators)
Why do video game workers offer labor at a discount? How can you design a video game for blind and sighted players? Does that design have lessons for other industries? These and other questions about…
-
The birth of the modern consumer movement
Today on the show, the story of the modern consumer movement in the U.S. and the person who inspired it: Ralph Nader. How Ralph Nader’s battle in the 1960s set the stage for decades of…
-
Hire Power (Update)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2021.) Millions of American workers in all sorts of industries have signed some form of noncompete agreement. Their pervasiveness has led to situations where workers looking to change jobs…
-
The case of the stolen masks
About thirty years ago, Yagya Kumar Pradhan woke up to the news that the temple he and his clan used had been broken into. The temple had been ransacked. And someone had stolen two holy…
-
How unions are stopped before they start (Update)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2023.) Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it’s been in decades. This dissonance is…
-
FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy
For the last year and a half, the story of FTX has focused largely on the crimes and punishment of Sam Bankman-Fried. But in the background, the actual customers he left behind have been caught…
-
Grocery prices, credit card debt, and your 401K (Two Indicators)
What’s going on with consumers? This is one of the trickiest puzzles of this weird economic moment we’re in. We’ve covered a version of this before under the term “vibecession,” but it’s safe to say,…
-
TikTok made me deduct it
TikTok, and other apps like it, are filled with financial advice. Some of it is reliable, some… less so. There are videos about running a business, having a side hustle, generating passive income. And also,…