Let me just say a preliminary thing, which is I don’t think that the central bank should be equally independent in all of its functions. There are good reasons to have independence in monetary policymaking subject to a mandate or subject to objectives set by the democratic parliament or legislature. And we understand those reasons having to do with avoiding short-run political intervention in monetary policy and the like, but in many of its other activities — you know, for example, as a bank regulator, while we believe that bank regulators should be independent to make their own judgments about the quality of banks, I don’t think the Fed can presume to be any more or less independent in that function than is the OCC or some other bank regulator.
It’s just another aspect of our activities.
In our provision of payment services, there probably is no real case for independence, and it’s entirely appropriate for the Congress to ask questions about, you know, what we’re charging for those services and how we’re providing them and so on.
So I think it depends very much on the — on the aspect of the particular activity that the central bank is involved in.
So independence is a subtle concept. I think the — what it means varies according to the particular activity or particular function.