A great central banker died in April. The world will miss Eddie George, but it would have missed him more had he still been governor of the Bank of England. His were the qualities that seem to be lacking in his successor, Mervyn King, and it is hard to believe that the financial system would have been subjected to such devastation if he had been governor when the first signals came in that all was not well.
A good central banker must be close to the markets, not aloof from them. He must be a good listener, a good mixer, and above all he must sense when markets are too exuberant and step in before excesses threaten the system. Lord George, as he became, had all of these qualities, and displayed them over two terms as governor when he showed he was more a man of action than a philosopher.
He was delighted when Gordon Brown, the new chancellor of the exchequer, made the most successful decision of his career to give the Bank freedom to set UK interest rates, and the governor probably lit a Rothmans cigarette in celebration before he proved how good the Bank could be at controlling inflation.