In his new book, a journalist of The Washington Post Neil Irwin talks about women and men bankers who control the supply of money in their nation's economy.

Time and again, much attention has been paid to Prime Ministers and Presidents who have tried to cope up with the struggling economy of the United States and the series of bank crises in Europe. Among all this, economics writer Neil Irwin, a journalist of The Washington Post, reveals that there are a group of policy makers who have the power to make enormously important decisions on their own, which they often deliberate in secret. He has released his new book "The Alchemists", which talks about the men and women bankers who control the supply of money in their nation's economy.

He compares them to the alchemists of yore. Since the invention of paper money, no pseudosciences to create money have been attempted like prior charlatans, cranks and serious scientists, who tried converting routine material into gold or silver.

"You don't need a crazy potion to create value where there was none," Irwin tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "It you have a central banker and you have a printing press and you have the authority of the state imbued in both, you can create money from thin air."

"The Alchemists" is about the efforts of central bankers in recent years to contain crises, as well as the past blunders of central bankers, whose decisions have sometimes had ruinous consequences. Irwin, however, says he thinks they are learning from past mistakes.