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This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 5th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How independent is the Fed?

How do markets evaluate the interactions between the Fed and Congress?

Mark Spindle is co-author of The Myth of Independence,

how Congress governs the Federal Reserve. We spoke at the Cato Institute's

Monetary Conference last month.

As we look back not just over the last few years, last decade, but we've gone back to those

organizing documents from a century ago and I think

tried to Sarah and I tried to understand exactly where the interdependence and that's a word that we've really tried to highlight

to our readers and to ourselves that the politicians on Capitol Hill and lately more

obviously in the White House have tried to

influence and have been influenced by actions of their Federal Reserve.

All right so let's try to understand the direction of the influence as it exists today, as you understand it.

One of those is very clearly that members of Congress and as you noted this president in particular have

...