In 2008, as everybody knows, the entire economy melts down. So that's the most extreme scenario of the Fed abusing its power. How close have we gotten to anything like that? To what extent have the political branches been able to influence the Fed or to what extent has the people on the Fed just been part of themselves and had a sort of like worldview that is not necessarily neutral because perhaps no one has a neutral worldview? Yeah. So I would say we have not gotten close to this. But the reason that I thought it was important enough to write an entire book about is there was absolutely pressure to do this in 2020. And these tools are brand new. The fact that we haven
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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