Indeed, conveniently, the fortified economics profession turned its macroeconomic cadres to explicitly argue for the necessity of an independent central bank as a prerequisite for rational monetary policy in the 1970s and 1980s. But in a 'virtuous' (or vicious?) cycle, central banks began to hire vast phalanxes of economists as part of their staffs, and, increasingly, even as their governors. After all, the purpose of 'independence' was to actualize expertise. Thus professional economists enjoyed new paths to power unencumbered by political accountability, and the central banks in turn devoted resources to enhancing economists' intellectual credibility. As Forder has pointed out, "The idea of central bank independence and the doctrines surrounding it contribute in significant ways to the standing and self-esteem of the economics profession." Any macroeconomic failures can be blamed on the misdeeds of outsiders, with their tainted political interventions, while the economists deem themselves absolved of all blame. One observes this dynamic in recent exculpatory memoirs of the main protagonists of the erstwhile Great Recession. This symbiotic dependence certainly paid off for the Swedish Riksbank, which managed to attain full political independence from democratic accountability in 1999.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 477