Bills before Congress to audit the Fed and offer it more statutory guidance may or may not be good ideas. But to say the Fed has been doing a fine job as things stand is not a compelling answer to them, because that’s not true. So I argue in Bloomberg today.

“A Fed under political assault adds to uncertainty and subtracts from confidence,” says Samuelson. A “political assault” is one way to describe tightening the statutory mandates on the Fed and requiring evaluations of its performance. But leave that aside. How much certainty and confidence does the Fed’s relatively unchecked discretion produce? As things stand, stock markets rise and fall based on stray comments by Janet Yellen.