The real objection is political not economic. Sending out checks is a hybrid of monetary and fiscal policy — public spending financed by pure money creation. That’s why it would work. Politically, this is awkward.

The big central banks have been granted independence to discharge a narrow mandate. Aiming for low inflation was seen as uncontroversial and hence non-political. Central banks could be left alone, without much compromising the democratic process. Meanwhile, politicians wouldn’t be tempted to risk higher inflation for short-term political purposes.

This idea that monetary policy isn’t political was never more than a useful fiction. Central banks can’t avoid making choices with distributional, hence political, implications. The real case for central-bank independence isn’t that monetary policy is non-political; it’s that central banks are better than politicians at economic policy.

Today, persistently slow growth and the possibility of another recession call that view into question. Not because central banks have been incompetent or because politicians would do a better job by themselves — plainly, neither is true — but because the monetary-and-fiscal distinction no longer works. The useful fiction has become a harmful fiction.

What if ordinary monetary policy isn’t enough? What if central banks can’t discharge their inflation-target mandate without a hybrid fiscal-and-monetary instrument? QE has already posed that question — it’s a hybrid too — but in a much more subtle way. When the discussion turns to the Fed sending out checks, the issue is impossible to ignore.

It needs to be addressed. Independence for central banks only makes sense if they have the means to do the job they’ve been given. At the moment, they’re dangerously under-equipped.

Vir: Clive Crook, BlombergView