Of course the power to print money and put it into the economy is not exercised by superheroes, but rather central bankers.
They don't have dramatic origin stories or character arcs, and it's not always clear who are the good guys and who are the bad. Christopher Leonard's book, The Lords of Easy Money, looks at how those regular people make extraordinary decisions that affect the economic incentives people face across the country.
Leonard's focus is on Thomas Hoenig, who is most famous for casting dissenting votes on the Federal Open Market Committee as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Dissenting votes are unusual on the FOMC, which is composed of Fed governors and regional bank presidents and sets the monetary policy for the United States by targeting interest rates.
The academics tend to view the bankers as unsophisticated, and the bankers tend to view the academics as being stuck in the ivory tower.
Hoenig, for his part, straddles both worlds-he has a Ph.D. in economics, and he was a bank regulator with the Kansas City Fed for many years before being president, so he knows how the business of banking actually works as well.
The Lords of Easy Money is a good reminder of how uncertain a lot of monetary policy is, and the potential for major mistakes should encourage everyone to be a little humbler.
https://freebeacon.com/policy/review-the-lords-of-easy-money/
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