Analysis: Central banking’s brave new world
The ambition of central bankers once was to ‘be boring’ but they now take on responsibility for policy objectives such as tackling inequality and climate change. Not all onlookers are pleased at this ‘self-defined mission creep’
Twenty years ago, central bankers were proudly narrow-minded and conservative. They made a virtue of caring more about inflation than about the average citizen, and took great pains to be obsessively repetitive. As future Bank of England (BOE) governor Mervyn King said in 2000, their ambition was to be boring.
The 2008 financial crisis abruptly dashed that objective. Ever since, central bankers have been busy developing new policy instruments to fight fires and ward off ...