Consider the examples of the recent decisions by the two central banks outlined below: In the fall of 2018, President Trump was highly critical of the Federal Reserve for repeatedly raising interest rates that year, describing the Fed as "crazy," "loco," "going wild" and "out of control". On September 27, 2018, the Fed hiked its policy rate for the third time that year, to 2-2.25%. In October of 2022, Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio (who chairs the Senate Banking Committee) and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, in separate letters to chairman Jerome Powell, called on the Fed to slow its aggressive pace of interest rate hikes. On November 3, 2022, the Fed hiked its policy rate again for the sixth time that year, to 3.75-4%. In 2019, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lowered its key policy rate (the 'repo rate') five times, by a total of 135 basis points (from 6.50% to 5.15%). At the start of 2019, after a year and a half of interest rate hikes, investors and analysts were predicting the central bank would keep interest rates unchanged to show caution about inflationary pressures from increased government spending. The first repo rate cut, on February 7, took