Narayana Kocherlakota, Columnist

Politicians Are Running the Economy Now

With interest rates stuck near zero, the Fed is losing its leading role.

April 22, 2020 at 10:00 AM UTC

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015.

The good old days.
Photographer: Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images

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For a long time, the U.S. Federal Reserve has played the leading role in managing the country’s economy. Its technocrats have sought to keep growth on a stable trajectory, primarily by moving a single interest rate up and down – in a process largely insulated from the pressures of electoral politics.

Now, though, the severity of the coronavirus crisis is placing more of the burden on Congress and the White House. As a result, stabilization policy is likely to get, and stay, a lot more politicized.