The Bank of England’s governor on Friday warned that Britain risked an economic recession if citizens voted to leave the European Union (EU) in next month’s referendum. “In that scenario we would expect a material slowing in growth, a notable rise in inflation, a challenging trade-off,” Mark Carney predicted at a news conference. Prudent advice from a sober-minded central banker? Or, as critics charge, a misguided effort to sway a democratic debate by pushing an institution that should remain above the fray into the political arena?

On one level the prediction represents a reasonable view of what could unfold if Britain embraces Brexit. But the BoE is also walking a fine line that separates legitimate macroeconomic analysis from political debates. Hanging in the balance is the central bank’s role as an effective steward of the nation’s economy that’s free (or mostly free) of the perception of political bias. That’s always been a delicate balance, in the UK and around the world. Central bankers, after all, draw authority from governments. But as last week’s BoE press conference suggests, keeping politics out of central banking isn’t getting any easier and it may be set to get a whole lot tougher.

It’s not that difficult to imagine the Federal Reserve getting dragged into the increasingly volatile politics linked to the US economy. Macro has always been tightly bound up with political views, but the last several years has witnessed this hazard go into overdrive. This is partly due to the sluggish recovery in the wake of the Great Recession. The weak growth has spawned any number of conspiracy theories that lay blame on the Fed for the economy’s unsatisfying recovery. Never mind that the Great Recession would almost surely have been worse without central bank intervention. Regardless, it’s getting harder for large swaths of the electorate to see the Federal Reserve as an institution that’s free of a political agenda, and a nefarious one at that.