De Amerikaanse Centrale bank ligt onder vuur. Op tafel in het Congres liggen onder meer voorstellen om de Fed aan een audit te onderwerpen, een monetaire regel in te voeren en de bevoegdheid om noodkredieten te verlenen, in te perken.
"Suddenly, everybody is looking around going, ‘Holy cow, maybe they're serious,' " about Fed-related legislation, said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.), the former chairman of the House Monetary Policy Subcommittee who has sponsored a measure to overhaul the Fed. "We are serious. We've been serious."
Ideas include requiring the Fed to establish a mathematical formula to guide interest-rate policy, limiting its emergency-lending powers and forcing the central bank to return billions of dollars banks paid to be members of the Fed system. The phenomenon is apparent outside the U.S., too, with central banks from Japan to the U.K. grappling with skepticism of their efforts to boost their economies.