Volker Wieland

Professor of Monetary Economics at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability at Goethe University Frankfurt and managing director of the IMFS; his work focuses on monetary and fiscal policy, macroeconomic models, inflation, and central-bank policy, with prior service as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Reserve Bank Removal Powers Could Expose the Fed to Presidential Control

At a Hoover Institution conference on central-bank governance, John Cochrane, Edward Nelson, Gary Richardson and David Wilcox treated Federal Reserve independence as a delegated legal structure rather than a self-executing norm. Richardson argued that Congress designed the Fed to frustrate presidential control, while Wilcox warned that ambiguous authority over Reserve Bank presidents could still give a determined president a path into the FOMC. Nelson added that independence protects the Fed’s operational judgment, not the quality of its monetary doctrine.

Hoover InstitutionJun 1, 202620 min read