And if central bankers sought to control money, however defined, by targeting the monetary base cash in circulation and commercial-bank reserves held with the central bank they lost control of the short-term interest rate, which might move erratically and damage the economy.

ECONOMIST: Economics focus

And the worst kind of meddling, Hayek thought, came in the government's determination to control the price of money - also known as the interest rate.

BBC: Masters of Money: Friedrich Hayek

But what the Fed is trying to do is say, what's the core rate of inflation that we can actually control with interest rates?

NPR: Doing the Math on Inflation Figures

The decision made in 1997 by Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor, to remove interest-rate decisions from political control and hand the power over to the Bank of England has immensely boosted the credibility of British monetary policy.

ECONOMIST: Inflation

Interest rate fluctuation has worked to make money artificially cheap in certain periods since the Fed inherited total control of monetary policy in 1971 after the dollar was delinked from gold.

FORBES: Debt-Free Firms Have The Edge With Rates Going Up