This is Planet Money from NPR.
Carolina Gariga is a watcher.
Not a periscope out the submarine binoculars in the bunker kind of watcher,
but her scholarly job is to be a kind of lookout for trouble in central banks across the world.
She's looking for science.
Checking to see
if these ideally independent guardians of economic stability from the central bank of Kenya to the Bank of Japan have maybe become vulnerable to political influence.
Have you been especially busy lately?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
It's keeping up with the news.
It's becoming a new job for me these days.
Carolina isn't usually following political dramas at our central bank, the US Federal Reserve.
She's more used to looking elsewhere, like her native Argentina,
where the president famously pressured the central bank to do what the president wanted.
And it did.
And that resulted in spiraling inflation, loss of credibility in the currency.
By this time, Carolina was no longer living in Argentina, but she had family back home.
And when she'd call them, they would say, well,