Such reforms would ensure that government attempts to spend against the cycle would not happen in the first instance because the politicians in question would know that the central bank has credibly committed to holding the line on prices by being both institutionally protected and politically conservative. Thus the bank can “credibly commit” in a way that the politicians cannot. As a consequence, policy making should be delegated away from democratically elected politicians to independent conservative central bankers who will dish out the bad medicine when required because their jobs do not depend upon pleasing constituents—except, perhaps, their constituents in the financial sector who benefit from ultralow inflation—but that’s another story.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 423