Mervyn King: drama school

John Maynard Keynes thought economists should be seen as “humble, competent people, on a level with dentists”. Before the financial crisis, the world’s central bankers tried to live up to that image. Policy interest-rates were managed in careful quarter-percentage point calibrations. Monetary policy was about as dramatic as a worthy play exploring the emotional micro-movements inside a bourgeois marriage. But the crisis changed the dynamic from dentistry to emergency room, from boring realism t...