A central banker's job is hard.
They're judged on peculiar goals, such as 'unemployment' and 'inflation'. These narrow goals are widely understood to represent quality of life ( for consumers ), ease of doing business ( for investors ), and integrity ( for governments ). Yet these narrow goals are poor proxies for the broader underlying goals, in an efficient environment where everyone has the same data, and disparate goals.
Central bankers are in the market, besides speculators ( private profiteers ), and government popularity contests ( public profiteers ). And against those forces, central bankers implicitly defend citizen welfare, and human development.
A central banker's political legacy is therefore skewed by their allegiance, more or less, to any of these poles. Did their policies result in increased economic equality, or inequality?
Maybe that's the real goal of central banking.
Further banter :
The Fed is armed with a leaf-blower, and a hoover. Congress is the tree that sheds the leaves. The game is to have only so many leaves on the ground at any one time.The Fed can't fundamentally fix problems generated by Congress. One is more specialised than the other, and therefore less responsible for the economic welfare of the nation's people.
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