main : 2012/10/30(11:24) The Elusive Promise of Independent Central Banking Keynote Speech by Marvin Goodfriend Independent central banking is reviewed as it emerged first under the gold standard and later with inconvertible paper money. Monetary and credit policy are compared and contrasted as practiced by the 19th century Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. The lesson is that wide operational and financial independence given to monetary and credit policy in the public interest subjects the central bank to incentives detrimental for macroeconomic and financial stability. An independent central bank needs the double discipline of a priority for price stability and bounds on expansive credit initiatives to secure its promise for stabilization policy. Keywords: Bank of England; Central bank independence; Credit turmoil of 2007–08; Federal Reserve; Great Inflation; Lender of last resort; Monetary policy JEL Classification: E3, E4, E5, E6 Professor of Economics, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and National Bureau of Economic Research (E-mail:
[email protected]) ......................................................................................................................................................... The paper benefited from the comments of Michael Bordo, Barry Eichengreen, Kenneth Garbade, Robert Hetzel, and Allan Meltzer, and presentations at the Bank of Korea 2012 International Conference, Seoul, South Korea and the Institute for Financial Studies, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan, China. The research was supported by the Gailliot Center for Public Policy at the Tepper School, Carnegie Mellon University. This paper was prepared for the 2012 BOJ-IMES Conference, “Demographic Changes and Macroeconomic Performance,” held by the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, in Tokyo on May 30–31, 2012.