Regarding Fed Independence…
As goes the Federal Debt, so goes Consumer Prices. The Fed is the great enabler of fiscal spending.
Why? Because the Fed prints money to subsidize portions of Treasury auctions for new debt issues. The Fed is not independent, it is an appendage of the U.S. Treasury.
The Fed does however have independence around rate setting, open market operations and for executing bailout programs such as its various QE efforts and its Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP, March 2023 - March 2024).
My view is that Congress ought to assert the power of the people and force the Fed to formally seek Congressional approval for executing open market operations and any bailout programs. Open market operations frankly ought to be extremely rare and bailouts ought to be non-existent. As for rate changes, Congress ought to remove the Fed’s ability to arbitrarily set a Fed Funds rate - allow the market to set rates.
The Fed could be run with total headcount of 5-10 people, not the 22,000 people it employs, if its interventionist policies were eliminated. In a perfect world there would be no Federal Reserve. The Big Four (JPM, BAC, WFC, C), banks could rotate responsibility around maintaining a stable money supply and a stable Dollar as measured by the Dollar’s exchange rate versus Gold.
For this to happen, the fiscal side needs to comply. Fiscal deficits must become a thing of the past. There ought to be an amendment to the United States Constitution that makes fiscal deficits unconstitutional given that deficits weaken the Dollar, thereby forcing higher prices on Consumers.