This is Planet Money from NPR.

Carolina Gariga is a watcher.

Not a periscope-out-the-submarine binoculars in the bunker kind of watcher,

but her scholarly job is to be a kind of lookout for trouble in central banks across the world.

She's looking for signs, checking to see if these ideally independent guardians of economic stability

from the central bank of Kenya to the Bank of Japan have maybe become vulnerable to political influence.

Have you been especially busy lately?

Yes. Yes? Yes.

Yes.

It's keeping up with the news is becoming a new job for me these days.

Carolina isn't usually following political dramas at our Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve.

She's more used to looking elsewhere, like her native Argentina, where the president famously pressured the central bank to do what the president wanted. And it did. And that resulted in spiraling inflation,

loss of credibility in the currency. By this time, Carolina was no longer living in Argentina,

but she had family back home. And when she'd call them, they would say, well, we went to three supermarkets because in this supermarket, either the oil was too expensive or there was no more oil.

Inflation, shortages.

Carolina saw the same thing play out a few years later in Turkey.

Turkey is another poster child of what not to do with monetary authorities.

Turkey also had an independent central bank, but the president wanted lower interest rates.

So he started firing and hiring, firing and hiring until he got them.

What were you thinking as you were watching that happen?

So, yes, that was a pretty clear example of what happens when you mess with central banks.

Turkey's inflation rose to around 80%.

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