[ExI] Bank of England

[Dan]

--- On Thu, 6/18/09, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Stefano Vaj<stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Critics say they are private entities mostly tied with
>> the financial
>> system (in fact, even legislators have more power on
>> them than
>> governments). Additionally, the Central European Bank
>> does not really
>> have any "government" to deal with.
>>
>> For sure, their "independence" in western countries
>> means that no
>> democratic control whatsoever on their functioning
>> exists.
>
> ### That's their one saving grace. Democratic control is
> evil.

I'm not so sure it'd necessarily be worse than the current system -- where, generally, the government (in the US, the president) appoints the board of the central bank or approves appointments but the bank kind of runs itself with little or no oversight.  In the US example, the FRB, IIRC, has no independent auditors and its members always come from the financial elite or from academics groomed for the role.  Would things be much worse were there, say, Congressional oversight and the GAO (or, better, some non-government auditor -- one unconnected with the FRB or the banking industry) had to look into the FRB accounts?  At worst, I think, the FRB's politicization would not be so much worse as clearly obvious.

My understanding of the Bank of England's current operations is a bit limited as most of my studies in this area have focused on its evolution before the 20th century and on the operations of other central banks.

Regards,

Dan