Imagine Barack Obama -- or even George W. Bush for that matter -- telling a crowd that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was doing a terrible job, that the Fed has it all wrong and its policies will lead to doom.
Even if you thought that, you'd never say it aloud for fear of undermining trust in one of the most important financial institutions in the world.
Such a speech would probably be front page news in the U.S., if not worldwide. It would definitely be controversial.
Not so in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel said just that about the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England in a speech yesterday. German papers barely noticed the speech.
"What other central banks have been doing must be reversed. I am very skeptical about the extent of the Fed's actions and the way the Bank of England has carved its own little line in Europe," Merkel was quoted by the Financial Times as saying.
She went on to criticize an ECB plan to pump more liquidity into the still-frozen European banking system. Her reason: The plan might worsen inflation in the future even though the latest data show deflation to be a bigger concern.
What's interesting, and worrying, about Merkel's speech is how out of character it is. The ECB was designed to be insulated from political influence -- at the insistence of the Germans, who feared that other countries, particularly France, would want to manipulate interest rates for short-term gain.
Now, with a tough re-election campaign coming up, Merkel has decided that bashing the ECB could offer a political advantage ahead of European Parliament elections this weekend. After an expensive bail-out of Opel, Merkel's trying to show the German public how committed she is to fighting inflation, a national obsession thanks to the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
Rather than bashing the ECB, Merkel might be better off asking why, despite the lack of a property bubble, is the German economy going to shrink twice as much as the U.S. economy? One reason is an obsessive emphasis on exports . The other reason, a refusal to deal seriously with a banking sector almost as sick as the American one.
With just under four months to go before September 27th national elections, it will be interesting to see what other taboos Merkel will break in order to win.