[salawat]

I've still got a lot of lit to read on the topic, but in terms of what it effectively manifests as, monetary policy seems to be some sort of bastard child of psychology and economics in the sense you hardly ever see the lever pulled until people start to lose faith in the system. There's probably some economic/fiscal buzzword for it, but that is the observation I've noticed just from reading on things.

The factor of just how much psychology plays into it, or at least "seems to, but doesn't", is what is most interesting to me.

Given J. P. Morgan's insistence that banking is first and foremost a business built firmly on its capacity to inspire trust, I can't really square the idea of monetary policy, its application, and its mechanism of action being entirely divorced from the collective psychology of the base participants in the economic system. Though I'm pretty sure I'll find some literature that suggests otherwise once I get looking.