Looking at the data afterward, we might think that all the interest rate and financial market volatility was unnecessary, because inflation was on target the whole time. In other words, perfect policy making might look silly, simply because people cannot see the underlying shocks – but the financial market volatility would be a natural consequence of the central bank’s efforts to achieve its mandate.
We are constantly talking to each other, discussing what we see and how we interpret what we see. 2  There is a sizeable literature on the relative efficiency of committee-based decision making. A committee tends to pool information and ideas from a group comprising different skills and views, and it also provides insurance against extreme preferences and outcomes.