Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. So long as that is in place and there is no evidence that the administration or the Congress or anybody else is requesting that we do things other than what we think is the appropriate thing, then what the relationships are don’t frankly matter.
—Alan Greenspan, thirteenth chairman of the Federal Reserve,
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (September 18, 2007)