The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported today that the central bank lacks independence in order to provide an efficient and credible monetary policy.

New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, in his turn, remarked that the empirical evidence has shown that independent central banks do a better job at achieving price stability.

"Also important is the nature of the mandate given the central bank and the combination of flexibility and constraints that the mandate provides, the quality of decisions made by the central bank over time in pursuing that mandate and how the central bank communicates about policy," he said.

"These are the best measures of credibility, and they look very good against the record of other central banks that now occupy the spectrum between the soft and flexible and pure and harder inflation targets," Geithner added.