The one-trick pony
THE Federal Reserve Bank of New York has a sideline in publishing comics, and I can say that The Story of the Federal Reserve Sys- tem is a worthy successor to Too Much, Too Little and Once Upon a Dime. Gordon Brown gets a friendly wave in a spoof head- line: LATE NEWS: CENTRAL BANK INDEPEN- DENCE ANNOUNCED IN GREAT BRITAIN. Independence, the caption explains, helps a central bank keep inflation in check. The Fed has always found this duty perfectly con- sistent with its duty to watch over banks, keep them in order and, if need be, rescue them or shut them. Mr Brown took those duties away from the Bank of England and has made it into something of a one-trick pony, which comes on every month, sets interest rates and goes off again. Francis Maude and his new commission on the Bank may and should, as I was saying last week, find this unduly limiting. He must ask the New York Fed for copies of its latest comic (all the words written in CAPITAL LETTERS) and hope that it will not be too far above his commissioners' heads.
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