The US president has recognised something that is rarely acknowledged: monetary policy is political. The question is how to make it democratic
If I asked you to list the things that make democratic politics meaningful, what would you include? Most likely elections and education. Perhaps the NHS, or the armed forces, or the justice system. I’m guessing that interest rates didn’t come to mind, which is strange, because they’re crucial to democracy. Last week, Donald Trump reignited a debate about who should be in charge of the monetary system that controls a country’s interest rates. You may disagree with Trump on a lot of things, but he’s not wrong to recognise that monetary policy – a subject that can seem dull and horribly technical – is fundamentally political, and tells us a lot about democracy.
Interest rates shape everything. They influence whether you can buy a house, and how many houses get built. They affect which businesses expand, what new technologies emerge, and which towns thrive or flounder. In the 1990s, central bankers hailed the “great moderation”, a period of low and stable prices dominated by central bank independence. Then came the financial crisis, the eurozone crisis, and then the pandemic. The giant bailouts that followed these events were often described as “unconventional”. But perhaps they simply uncovered a fact that was always there – that monetary policy is not as apolitical as some would like people to believe.
Leah Downey is a junior research fellow at St John’s College Cambridge and the author of Our Money