by Miles Kimball, Confessions of a Supply-Side LiberalEver since the 2008 Financial Crisis, the Fed has been controversial. I think three things took away from the respect they had commanded: not having avoided the Financial Crisis, being involved in bailing out banks, and not getting a quicker recovery afterwards. Not predicting the Financial Crisis was a failure that was widely shared; bailing out the banks was necessary given that first failure; the last hit to Fed prestige was in an important sense justified; see “America's Big Monetary Policy Mistake: How Negative Interest Rates Could Have Stopped the Great Recession in Its Tracks.