The rise of central bankers to the status of new ‘masters of the universe’ has been matched by mounting allegations of political overreach. In the Eurozone, for instance, the ECB has increasingly been accused of straying into the fiscal realm. Why do politically independent central banks engage intensely and publicly with government policies, thereby threatening the neat separation between monetary and fiscal policy that was meant to protect central banks themselves from interference? While existing political economy accounts have focused squarely on the issues of government debt and central bankers' fears of fiscal dominance, we argue for the emerging role of ‘financial dominance’ throughout the crisis, thereby shedding light on the structural forces that master the new masters of the universe. To this end, we pursue a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative text analysis techniques with a qualitative understanding of the context in which central banks communicate on fiscal policy.

中文翻译：

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“宇宙大师”的主人？欧元区的货币，财政和金融主导地位

中央银行家的崛起与新的“宇宙大师”的地位相伴而来的是，政治指控越来越泛滥。例如，在欧元区，越来越多的欧洲央行被指控涉嫌进入财政领域。为什么政治上独立的中央银行会积极地和公开地参与政府政策，从而威胁到旨在保护中央银行自身不受干扰的货币政策与财政政策之间的利落分离？尽管现有的政治经济账户已将焦点完全集中在政府债务和中央银行对财政支配地位的担忧上，但我们认为“金融支配地位”在整个危机中正在发挥新作用，从而阐明掌握新主人的结构性力量。宇宙 为此，我们追求一种混合方法，