New Delhi, Jan. 15 -- Washington has discovered a new scandal and it involves neither classified documents nor foreign donors. It involves marble. We now have quantitative easing in Carrara. The US Department of Justice has initiated a criminal investigation of actions taken by US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

The alleged offence: a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed's Marriner S. Eccles headquarters and adjacent 1951 Constitution Avenue building. The director of the Office of Management and Budget has likened it to Versailles and denounced its cost overruns-placed at about $700 million-as "outrageous."

Louis XIV, one gathers, would have blushed. The implication is that central bankers have mistaken monetary policy for interior d...