Several months ago, the Federal Reserve enhanced its communications by publishing these forecasts on a quarterly basis, lengthening the horizon of the projections, and providing additional quantitative and qualitative information (Bernanke, 2007; Mishkin, 2007d).
18  Almost two centuries ago, British economist David Ricardo summarized the argument for granting operational independence to the central bank: "It is said that Government could not be safely entrusted with the power of issuing paper money; that it would most certainly abuse it.…There would, I confess, be great danger of this if Government – that is to say, the Ministers – were themselves to be entrusted with the power of issuing paper money" (Ricardo, 1823).