240. Is central bank independence a thing of the past?

Remember a time when central banks pretended to be independent, insulated from day-to-day politics? That had all but disappeared before COVID, but the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin of central bank independence. Instead, they have been colluding with governments to provide the mechanism to issue more public sector debt. Monetarism can’t resolve this crisis, so central banks’ usual tools are worthless. This week Phil Dobbie asks Prof Steve Keen whether this new arrangement, where the central banks and the treasury collude, is here to stay? If the government can use money creation to develop policies to build jobs and control inflation, what’s left for the central banks?