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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

> If the Fed can afford to give negative rates to the banks, shouldn't it follow that the DoE can afford to give negative rates to students?

Nope. The Fed is independent of the government and, most importantly, does not answer to Congress. So it can adopt measures to attempt to stimulate and improve the economy which Republicans would surely block if given the opportunity.

The DoE, however, is an executive agency and has its budget determined by Congress. Changing the interest rates would require an act of Congress.

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> Nope. The Fed is independent of the government

Well, Yellen recently said something along the lines of 'being part of the team' and Bernanke claimed something similar in his book or talks iirc ( sorry, no references atm ).

The whole independent claim is just smoke and mirrors.

It seems in my uneducated opinion like the whole system would rely heavily on "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Anyone more knowledgeable have insight into that?

> The whole independent claim is just smoke and mirrors.

No, its actually legally substantive (though its more independent within the government than independent of the government.) Within its scope of granted authority, the Fed can (and does, regularly) act independently of the President and Congress. OTOH, actions outside of the Fed's legal powers require actions by Congress and/or the Executive Branch.

Now, certainly, the Fed, the President, and the Congress all interact and share their opinions, preferences, etc.

The specific truth is that the Fed has fewer constraints on its policy decisions than the Dept. of Education does.

The Dept. of Education's policy decisions are tightly constrained by Congress. If there's a law on the books giving the DoE freedom to determine student loan interest rates, then they can. I don't think such a law exists, though, so the Congress would need to pass one.

The Fed was created by Congress, and has a multi-part mission that it must meet, which has been set by Congress. But beyond that, it has great freedom to determine how to meet that mission on a day-to-day basis.

The Fed is part of the federal government, though. It even has its own federal police force.

Strictly speaking, it's not independent of "the government" so they do feel like part of the government. Certainly they feel like "part of the team" when it comes to governance.

However, the Fed often dramatically disagrees with Congress and/or the President when it comes to the best ways of fulfilling their shared values. Witness the consistent complaints from Congress over Fed policies like QE.

> The whole independent claim is just smoke and mirrors.

It's a lot more than that and has a legal basis. If the Fed weren't legally independent, I'm quite sure that Congress would have forced it to adopt different policies than it has.

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