The Past, Present, and Contested Future of Central Banks

The Rhodes Center Podcast explores the most important issues in finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations with the world’s leading experts. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center, at the Watson Institute at Brown University. On this episode Mark talks with Manuela Moschella about the recent transformations to central bank policy and orthodoxy. Central banking used to be straightforward - fix short term rates and get price stability. 2008 changed that. Engineering asset price instability and massive bailouts became the norm and, despite all that, deflation, not inflation became the problem. The Fed and the ECB were late in waking up to that fact, and just when they did, COVID hit and inflation came back. So Mark asks Manuela: what is a central banker to do? Manuela is an Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the Scuola Normale Superiore and Associate Fellow at the Europe Programme at Chatham House. Watch Manuela’s talk at the Rhodes Center. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.