Central banks didn't use to do this, in the post-war period up until about 1980, they tried targeting the monetary aggregates like M2.

Unfortunately they discovered that the size of monetary aggregates was outside the control of central banks, these were demand determined by the public's desire for money balances. So all attempts to control the growth of monetary aggregates failed.

Having an inability to control anything else, the central banks turned to the one thing they could control -- overnight interest interest rates, and from that, bond yields more generally. That is the one tool in their toolbox.

Do you think other tools exist?

I don’t think we have a wide enough Overton window when it comes to economic discussions, the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s killed a lot of little levers of economic control in most post social democratic countries. Instead we were promised a new age of free trade and economic liberalism and one single, shiny lever to control the speed of the economy like the governor on a steam train.

Yet here we are 50 years later suffering booms and busts just like before. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge the failure of 50 years of industrialisation destruction that in hindsight was the inevitable outcome of open trade and the retreat of governments.

To answer the question, yes I think there are other options and trade barriers need to be part of that conversation.