What are the arguments today for and against rapidly raising interest rates in order to keep inflation down? This is such an interesting question because it's something that they are just grappling with painfully and in real time. The argument for raising interest rates very quickly is that you want to get inflation under control as quickly as you can. If you don't get it under control in a timely manner, it might just become completely embedded in all of our psychology.
American government is designed to have components that are not directly accountable to the public. The Supreme Court is probably the most recognizable example, but it’s not the only one. In her new book, “Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes On A New Age Of Crisis,” New York Times reporter Jeanna Smialek focuses on another unelected institution with a lot of power over American life: the Federal Reserve.
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Smialek argues that over the past century, through successive crises, the Fed has accumulated the power to choose winners and losers across American markets and society on the whole. And if partisan loyalists were to make their way onto the Fed board, that degree of power could be abused.
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