it’s perfectly right and reasonable to criticize the fed and its “independence” first, article 1, section 8 of the US constitution authorizes congress “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof..” money printing is the people’s prerogative, delegated (abdicated?) to the Fed by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, but that doesn’t mean congress (the people) forever give up that constitutional power. second, the fed has an awfully bad track record of forecasting economic and monetary developments. it printed enormous sums during covid, causing the worst inflation in decades. early on, “inflation is transitory” was the mantra post covid, which they later admitted was wrong. and this was just the latest in a slew of practically neverending miscalculations. see this clip from omid malekan’s legendary 2010 youtube video “quantitative easing explained.” third, the fed inflates the monetary supply perpetually, and the cantillon effect describes how the beneficiaries of that money printing are always those closest to the spigot: banks, government and its contractors, asset holders, etc. newly created money enters the economy unevenly, distorting relative prices and redistributing wealth based on the path it takes through the economy. the neverending monetary expansion benefits wealthy asset owners almost always at the expense of working people, creating headwinds to prosperity for real americans, creating structural distortions in the economy, and giving credence to dangerous socialist or communist ideological critiques of the economy. fourth, the Fed is notoriously unaccountable and detached from reality. the Fed is comprised almost entirely of unaccountable technocrats, has its own police force, doesn’t get funding from Congress, doesn’t need any approvals of its policies or budgets, has never been audited, and its regional banks are owned by the banks themselves. indeed, the only members of the Fed subject to any U.S. government involvement are the 7 members of the board of governors, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. but none of their operations or decisions are subject to any executive or congressional oversight or supervision. fifth, the Fed utilized its examination criteria to enact political censorship on banks at their customers through “operation chokepoint 2.0”. the Fed famously has a “dual mandate” - to manage monetary policy in ways that reduce inflation and maximize employment. but it also possess significant (if not supreme) bank regulatory powers. these powers are often duplicative of those powers possessed by agencies much more accountable to the people, like the OCC and FDIC. why should the Fed be charged with both monetary policy and bank supervision, especially when it has a history of using supervisory powers to deny banking access, such actions are not subject to congressional oversight? notwithstanding whether Jay Powell has been an effective Fed chairman (i believe that he has done a very good job, given the circumstances), it’s completely reasonable for the people to criticize the Fed, call for reforms, or even suggest or take steps to remove its leadership. here’s a contrarian opinion to what i hear from many of my friends in markets: while i don’t think using the cost of the Fed’s renovation as justification for removing Powell makes sense, particularly given that the Fed doesn’t even use money from Congress for this, i’m not convinced some of the issues i described aren’t sufficient cause to remove a Fed chair. it’s never been done, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t ever be done. what does it mean to have a job where you can’t be fired for performing poorly? why should any government (or Congressionally authorized) job, like the Fed chair, be unaccountable to the people?