Rajan versus Ben at Brooking's

On 10th April speaking at a Brooking's Institution panel discussion in Washington, chief of RBI, India's central bank , Raghuram Rajan called for better coordination and asked, 'If the policy hurts the rest of the world more than it helps the United States, should this policy be pursued?'

He further stated that the Fed has kept interest rates low for too long through its "quantitative easing" asset purchases.

Former Fed chief Ben Bernanke, who was also present, lashed out, 'The speech just reflects the fact that you are very skeptical of unconventional monetary policies. You say that the rules of the game should prevent policies with 'large adverse spillovers and questionable domestic benefits.' If you have a different empirical assessment than I do, that in fact, emerging markets would be better off if they hadn't been used, then you would have a different view."You make a very clever equivalence between exchange rate intervention and unconventional monetary policy. There's one big difference, which is that exchange rate intervention sterilized the effects on monetary policy or on money supply. What that means is unconventional policies are demand augmenting, they increase demand in the economy, whereas exchange rate interventions like the tariffs of the 1930s are demand diverting.'

However, they shook hands later as Rajan said, 'Ben, I am going to miss you.'