Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 A beginner's guide to central banking
- 2 Very boring guys?
- 3 Wind in the willows: the small world of central banking c. 1900
- 4 Something for everyone: new central banks, 1900–1939
- 5 A series of disasters: central banking, 1914–1939
- 6 The mysteries of central bank cooperation
- 7 The first central banking revolution
- 8 No time for cosmic thinkers: Central banking in the ‘Keynesian’ era
- 9 Rekindling central bank cooperation in the Bretton Woods era
- 10 The goose that lays the golden egg: Central banking in developing countries
- 11 The horse of inflation
- 12 The second central banking revolution: Independence and accountability
- 13 Reputations at stake: financial deregulation and instability
- 14 Inflation targeting: the holy grail?
- 15 The long march to European monetary integration
- 16 A world with half a million central bankers
- References
- Index
2 - Very boring guys?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 A beginner's guide to central banking
- 2 Very boring guys?
- 3 Wind in the willows: the small world of central banking c. 1900
- 4 Something for everyone: new central banks, 1900–1939
- 5 A series of disasters: central banking, 1914–1939
- 6 The mysteries of central bank cooperation
- 7 The first central banking revolution
- 8 No time for cosmic thinkers: Central banking in the ‘Keynesian’ era
- 9 Rekindling central bank cooperation in the Bretton Woods era
- 10 The goose that lays the golden egg: Central banking in developing countries
- 11 The horse of inflation
- 12 The second central banking revolution: Independence and accountability
- 13 Reputations at stake: financial deregulation and instability
- 14 Inflation targeting: the holy grail?
- 15 The long march to European monetary integration
- 16 A world with half a million central bankers
- References
- Index
Summary
Rogoff's [conservative central banker] … is a splendid illustration of the humorous definition of an economist as someone who sees that something works in practice and asks whether it can also work in theory. Is there any doubt that central banks in general … have been dominated by quite conservative people?
Alan Blinder (1998: 47)Felipe Pazos has been replaced as President of the National Bank of Cuba following disagreement with Fidel Castro. He has been replaced by Ernesto Guevara … Guevara, aged 31, is an Argentine, a communist, and is neither an economist nor a banker … He has been a prominent leader of the revolutionary movement and may be regarded as a fellow conspirator of Castro … By this latest move Castro has swept away the last vestige of orthodox authority in the financial field.
(Report on National Bank of Cuba, 1 December 1959, Bank of England Archive, OV162/5)Che Guevara, whose reign at the National Bank of Cuba was relatively brief (Yaffe 2009), is the most iconic exception to the general rule that central bankers are rather cautious and conservative people. One of the messages of this chapter is that central bankers come in a number of varieties. Some are headstrong, others compliant. Some have strong economic views (whether orthodox or unorthodox), while others are opportunistic. Thus, when Jean-Pierre Roth, chairman of the Swiss National Bank, describes central bankers as ‘very boring guys’ (quoted in Baker and Singer 2006: 64), he is being rather modest.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Central Banking in the Twentieth Century , pp. 17 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010