Polls show the top issue among voters this election year is their fears about the fate of the economy. Voters can grill congressional candidates at town hall meetings and on call-in radio shows and they can get a fix on the presidential candidates’ economic plans through campaign news coverage. But the fate of the economy may be most influenced by a seven-member body that does not answer to the American voter.

The Federal Reserve, observers such as former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich have said, is a largely unaccountable fourth branch of government. The Fed has had an active hand in the expanding economies of the late 1980s and late 1990s. And now, Mr. Reich asserts, it is making a critical decision about which is the lesser of two evils, recession or inflation, which in turn affects every American’s wallet.

The Fed was created in 1913 as a means of providing for a more “elastic” currency; that is, to expand and contract money supply to control the economy. And the Fed was to be a safeguard against what had become frequent banking “panics,” such as the one in 1907 that saw many Americans withdraw savings for fear of losing them, which in turn crippled banks.

Though government regulatory arms have succeeded over the past 70 years in steering the economy from extremes like the Great Depression, recent history reveals the Fed’s heavy-handed presence and its mark on the political realm.

Jimmy Carter’s tenure as president was marked by interest rates as high as 18 percent, with double-digit inflation. Yet it was Mr. Carter who nominated Paul Volcker as chairman of the Fed in 1979; he tightened the availability of money and succeeded in lowering inflation to 1 percent by 1987. The timing, though, coming near the end of his term, meant that Ronald Reagan, not Mr. Carter, got credit for the fixed economy.

George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 on the strength of that economy, but when it faltered in 1991 and 1992, Bill Clinton persuaded voters he would “focus like a laser” on fixing it again. Mr. Reich has said that the Clinton administration consulted with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan early in the first term, and Mr. Greenspan told the president to make deficit reduction a priority before tackling other policy initiatives such as health care reform. The Fed opened the purse strings that contributed to the booming mid- and late-1990s.

Earlier this decade, Mr. Reich observed recently in his commentary on public radio’s “Marketplace,” the Fed “made money so cheap, lenders shoved it out the door to anyone capable of standing up.” That created the housing bubble, which in turn led to the subprime lending debacle.

Now, Mr. Reich says, the Fed has decided that “the threat of recession is worse than inflation, so it’s lowered interest rates.” That move has devalued the dollar, which in turn contributes to the high cost of oil, gas and food.

“Can you imagine if Congress caused this to happen?” Mr. Reich asks.

The Fed board’s seven members, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, serve 14-year terms. This body, according to Mr. Reich, “pretty much runs the U.S. economy.”

The question is, for whose interests is it working?