You are correct. Striking how many HN commentors are so often confident and yet wrong...
Wrong about what? This is about the US Fed, in context of...well you can read the thread.
>> Here's a biggish counter-example, setting fiscal policy for 25% of the world's economic output
>>> Right! How could the other poster have possibly missed that?
>>>> There are other central banks. Ignorant Americans...
Unless youre talking more broadly, in which case this is the internet. Do Tik Tok videos have to assume everyone is Chinese?
The Finnish central bank is called the “Bank of Finland”
Also, this statement is incorrect:
> Simplified: the central bank decide on an interest rate that they want to see. By itself that decision doesn't do anything.
The Fed does in fact set interest rates and that decision directly impacts rates all down the line to mortgages and local loans. Intervening in the bond market is another tool that the Fed can use.
A central bank doesn't directly set interest rates for your mortgage.
It can set rates at which it will lend to other banks, which in turn influences the rates banks will offer to mortgage borrowers, but this isn't necessarily so, see for example 2008.
Of course there are more contracts directly tied to the central bank rates, but thats just formalising the thing thats supposed to happen anyway.