When he took office, Obama was convinced, according to his former adviser Christina Romer, that monetary policy had done all it could: that with interest rates near zero, the Fed couldn’t loosen any further. This wasn’t true. Raising the inflation target, depreciating the dollar, doing more quantitative easing — there were many ways a determined Fed could have reflated the economy. And the central bank would, in fact, go on to do more quantitative easing later in Obama’s first term. …

My guess is that Obama doesn’t know, think or care much about monetary policy. That’s usually a good disposition for someone in the Oval Office to have. A president who was too interested in monetary policy would be tempted to interfere with the Fed. Indifference beats the attitude of many Republicans, who are still convinced, contrary to all the evidence, that rampant inflation is just around the corner.

While presidential apathy about central banking is usually a virtue, once every 70 years or so the economy suffers through a calamity of tight money. We found ourselves in that circumstance when Obama took office. The country could have been well served by a president who favored monetary looseness, a policy the Democratic Party has supported for about a century. Because of Obama’s indifference, we had no such luck.