WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 6 (DPI) – Four former chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board – Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen – signed their names to a bland commentary affirming the importance of a “nonpartisan, nonpolitical” central bank. The Wall Street Journal, which published the six-paragraph comment, saw some swift reader pushback.

Many reader comments asserted that the US economy might be better off without all the monetary and fiscal intervention by the central bank.

And one of the most popular comments found calls for independence – especially after years of post-crisis stimulus – as hypocritical.

The most popular comment:

NOW you call for it. Where we you when the Fed was enabling the Pelosi-Reid-Obama (supposedly) “one-time” spending blowout falsely advertised as “stimulus,” which was rolled into the baseline budget in subsequent years? Where were you when the Fed kept interest rates artificially low for eight years of a weak Obama economy in a futile attempt to compensate for his political allocation of capital and anti-business regulatory agenda? Where were you when Obama added trillions to the debt at ultra-low, Fed-enabled interest rates?

The problem with all you Feddies is that you falsely believe the people at the Fed understand and can manage the economy. We would be better off without the Federal Reserve at all.

That, of course, was met with you-don’t-understand replies from other readers, who blamed much of the Washington’s involvement in the economy more on Congress than on the Fed.

You clearly don’t even understand what the Fed is. They had nothing to do with the stimulus. They don’t make the fiscal policy, they manage the costs or profits from it. They do monetary policy. The rates weren’t artificially low depending on what your baseline is. Too low, to me or anyone disagreeing with Keynesian stimulus,  would mean loaning money out at a loss, meaning interest rates below inflation. During the recession there was so much fear about deflation because of the myth that it’s bad, that they wanted to make sure there was inflation, or claim there was, even though it’s very arguable there was really deflation.
The Fed doesn’t control what the market pays for bonds it’s selling. They don’t decide the rate on US debt. That was asinine. Read up about something before you speak.
The people signing this commentary were not directed to act in one way or another by their Presidents. Read what Alexander Hamilton said about the Federal Reserve. It would be stupid to dismantle it