[craigc]

I agree that running it on top of another ledger like ETH or BTC makes no sense.

That said, the idea of trusting a central bank that is completely unaccountable to the public or even to the Government is crazy to me.

[jjoonathan]

Sure, go ahead, make the federal reserve more politically accountable -- and watch as inflation spirals out of control because the tool to combat inflation (raising interest rates) is political poison.

Just how poisonous? Well, what have you heard about presidents Carter and Reagan?

[icf80]

This is how the Fed is run, they need the power to issue money whenever there is need without oversight.

[pbak]

I'd ask "whose oversight is avoided ?", and "whose isn't ?". You are supposing the Fed's deciding committees are acting fully independently (wittingly or not) within their mandate. AFAIK the process isn't exactly transparent, even ex post facto.

Similarly, we've seen last 12 years there's more than one way to skin a cat - issue "money" at the fed level - than just printing. They invented at least 3 mechanisms since.

That being said, it's not entire clear to me how current tokens/coins solve that conundrum without losing some major desirable/necessary "macro" features and flexibility.

[mastax]

"Without oversight" is stronger than reality as Trump's threatening of Powell illustrates. It is true that there is a strong culture of a politically independent, technocratic Fed. However this is a relatively recent invention by Volcker in the 80s. Volcker was pretty convincing about it's merits, hence it's survival, but even he was threatened by Reagan to not raise rates during the re-election campaign.