So I'm reading Crisis Counsel at CNN/Money...

...which is a bunch of major business players talking about the recent credit shenanigans. And I read the following from Steven S. Roach from Morgan Stanley Asia:

The current financial crisis is a wake-up call for modern-day central banking. The world can't afford to lurch from one bubble to another. The cost of neglect is an ever-mounting systemic risk that could pose a grave threat to an increasingly integrated global economy. It could also spur the imprudent intervention of politicians, undermining the all-important political independence of central banks. The art and science of central banking is in desperate need of a major overhaul--before it's too late. (emphasis mine)

Now, there's a wealth of concepts referred to in that one paragraph, but I highlighted something.

You'll notice that nowhere does the guy question the existence of central banks as a good idea. It's just sorta lying there, assumed as he continues with "...in need of a major overhaul...."

There's an alternative. Get governments out of the money business and just put money and business back into the hands of free people. Overhauling central banks is like fine-tuning the timing on a ticking bomb. I mean, it might improve the bomb itself, but you still go boom.

Otherwise, then and as now, you're plain gonna get: imprudent intervention of politicians. Every time, and all the time.