Independent central banks were once all the rage. Taking decisions over interest rates and handing them to technocrats was seen as a sensible way of preventing politicians from trying to buy votes with cheap money. They couldn’t be trusted to keep inflation under control, but central banks could.
And when the global economy came crashing down in the autumn of 2008, it was central banks that prevented another Great Depression. Interest rates were slashed and the electronic money taps were turned on with quantitative easing (QE). That, at least, is the way central banks tell the story. » | Larry Elliott | Thursday, September 12, 2019
