Were Fed independence repealed today, long bond yields would go up, I think, quite a lot.

And the currency would fall and probably equities would fall.

And the rising interest rates, on average, in the future, would hurt people.

The rise in inflation expectations and then eventually the rise in inflation,

or the deep recession to avoid the rights in inflation expectations would hurt people. And actually quite quickly people would say,

well, actually an independent central bank is quite a good thing, isn't it?

I'm Bethany McLean. Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?

And I'm Luigi Zengalis. We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.

First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?

And most importantly, what is it?

We ought to do better by the people that get left behind.

I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process.

So the episode you're about to listen to was recorded before this week's stunning news

about the Justice Department serving some pina's on the Federal Reserve.

Luigi and I are going to have an additional conversation to discuss that news and what it means.

However, we think that this news actually makes this episode all the more relevant.

The Federal Reserve is the most powerful economic institution in the United States and arguably

the world. It can raise your mortgage rate, move the stock market, throw millions out of work,

or rescue the financial system, all without a single vote from the public. We call that

independence. The economic justification for independence is very simple. If politicians run monetary policy,

they goose the economy before the election and leave us with inflation afterwards. So we handed

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