Attention Conspiracy Theorists: Read This Post

I tend to be skeptical of those who believe that the Federal Reserve is engaged in a massive conspiracy, for reasons known and unknown, to protect its turf and turn us all into serfs, but then I'll read a quotation like this, and I'll scratch my head.

 It is no secret that I believe the best public policy is made quietly, behind the scenes. So it is not often that I allow myself to be on this side of a microphone. Actually, I am still wondering how I did let this happen.

How could those words escape the barrier of the teeth of... a Federal Reserve official in 2009? They did!   Terry Checki, executive vice president of the New York Federal Reserve, uttered them in a speech about the year's events.

The Fed IS used to making policy decisions behind closed doors, and the tradeoff between insulation from overt political pressure and transparency has been noted, and much debated. But still -- Congress is demanding more openness from the Fed. Terry Checki seems like a strong enough guy. He comes off well in David Wessel's book about the Bernanke Fed, where he was painted as a voice of reason when it came to the entity's relationship with Goldman Sachs. But this isn't the political climate in which one would defend, even tacitly, public policy made beyond closed doors...