Should the Federal Reserve Board of Governors remain independent?

See an excerpt from a report prepared by Elizabeth Dunne Schmitt, 
Associate Professor of Economics at SUNY (State University of New
York), Oswego campus:

"Chapter 14: Structure of Central Banks and the Federal Reserve System" 
http://www.oswego.edu/~edunne/340chapter14.html

"Federal Reserve Independence: The Pros 
Basically, the main argument for independence is the notion that
political goals are short-term and economic goals tend to be more long
term. While Congress might be tempted to use monetary policy to
maximize re-election, an independent Fed is free to pursue policy that
promotes policies that pursue long-term economic goals, even if they
are unpopular in the short-run. . . ."

"Federal Reserve Independence: The Cons 
The basic argument here is that independence is undemocratic and makes
the Fed accountable to no one if they do a lousy job. Voters can get
rid of bad senators, but they are stuck with bad Fed governors. . . ."

Search String:

"Federal Reserve Board of Governors" AND independent AND pros AND cons

Best regards,
nancylynn-ga
Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Answer by nancylynn-ga on 08 Jun 2004 21:02 PDT

Cecelia:

I assumed you wanted an article that weighed the pros and cons of that
issue, and that was the best resource I could find on that particular
issue. (In fact, it was the only article that came up.)

Please see Google Answers pricing guidelines:
http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html
You'll see:

"$2 - $5 Can be answered with a single link or a single piece of information."   

I'm genuinely confused -- were you expecting a researcher to write an
editorial or essay on this topic?

nancylynn-ga
Google Answers Researcher