Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:32, 5 May 2012

Mervyn Allister King, GBE, FBA (born 30 March 1948) is the Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee. He was previously Deputy Governor from 1998 to 2003, Chief Economist and Executive Director from 1991, and a non-executive director of the Bank from 1990 to 1991.

King is a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of King's and St John's Colleges, Cambridge and holds Honorary Degrees from Cambridge, Birmingham, City of London, Edinburgh, London Guildhall, London School of Economics, Wolverhampton, Worcester and Helsinki Universities. He is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, sits on the Advisory Council of the London Symphony Orchestra, is a Patron of Worcestershire County Cricket Club, Honorary President of Ekenäs Cricket Club in Finland, and a Trustee of the National Gallery.

Early life and pre-Bank career

Mervyn King is the son of Eric King, a railway worker who retrained as a geography teacher after the war, and Kathleen (née Passingham). He was born in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire and studied at Warstones Junior School Wolverhampton and then on to Wolverhampton Grammar School, King's College, Cambridge (gaining a first-class degree in Economics in 1969; MA), St John's College, Cambridge, and Harvard (as a Kennedy Scholar). Whilst at Cambridge, King was Treasurer of the Cambridge University Liberal Club in 1968.

After graduation he worked as a researcher on the Cambridge Growth Project with future Nobel Laureate Richard Stone and Terry Barker at the University of Cambridge. He then taught at the University of Birmingham and was a Visiting Professor at Harvard and the MIT where he shared an office with then Assistant Professor Ben Bernanke. From October 1984 he was Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics where he founded the Financial Markets Group. In 1981, he was one of the 364 economists who signed a letter to The Times condemning Geoffrey Howe's 1981 Budget.

Bank of England

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

King joined the Bank in March 1991 as chief economist and executive director, after being a non-executive director from 1990 to 1991. He was appointed Deputy Governor in 1997, taking up his post on 1 June 1998. In the same year, King became a member of the Group of Thirty.

An ex-officio member of the bank's interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee since its inception in 1997, King has taken part in its monthly meetings. He is the first incumbent Governor of the Bank of England to be received in audience by Queen Elizabeth II.

Late 2000s financial crisis

After becoming Bank governor, King explained that Bank of England policy was "similar to that of the Federal Reserve" under Alan Greenspan. Greenspan described his approach as "mitigat the fallout when it occurs". King agreed with Alan Greenspan that, "It is hard to identify asset price 'bubbles'." it Real or Is it Another Bubble? |publisher=Center for Economic and Policy Research |accessdate=28 February 2012 2011}}</ref> Other warnings about the UK housing market followed, including from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in 2004 and the OECD in 2005. King noted the "unusually large" difference between the RPIX and CPI at the beginning of 2004 (the latter does not include house prices as part of its inflation measure, whilst the former does), and, six months later, that UK house prices had risen "to levels which are well above what most people would regard as sustainable in the longer term", having increased by more than 20% over the preceding year and more than 100% over the preceding five.

In 2005, The Economist described the run-up in UK house prices as forming part of "the biggest bubble in history", and, by October 2007—when the UK housing bubble was at its peak—the IMF was reporting that the UK housing market was "overpriced by up to 40 per cent". As noted by the OECD, house-price volatility "can raise systemic risks as the banking and mortgage sectors are vulnerable to fluctuations in house prices due to their exposure to the housing market."

Dean King in The American Prospect said the failure by Greenspan and King to tackle the bubbles in their respective countries' housing markets resulted in catastrophic "fallout" when the bubbles burst, resulting in the worst recessions in both countries since the Great Depression. UK–US inaction may be compared to action taken by China and Australia. Another result of the financial crisis has been King's rejection of the Bank's devout focus on price stability, or inflation targeting, a policy that was instituted after Black Wednesday in 1992 and that was continued by King after becoming governor in 2003. One of the two early lessons King drew from crisis were that "price stability does not guarantee stability of the economy as a whole" and that "the instruments used to pursue financial stability are in need of sharpening and refining." Accepting King's narrow concentration on price stability had resulted in disaster, the 2012 Financial Services Bill, in transferring the majority of macroprudential regulatory powers from the FSA to the Bank, will grant the Financial Policy Committee (chaired by King) the power to curb lending in booms, including placing limits on the public's access to mortgages. Overall, one former, senior BoE official summed up the Bank's pre-crisis performance well: "How can you look back with the benefit of hindsight and see it as a success? We were responsible for financial stability and we utterly failed to take any avoiding action against the greatest financial crisis in our lifetimes". David Blanchflower noted that, even as late as the summer of 2008, King did not even see the financial crisis coming.

In its review of Bank of England accountability, one of the major complaints of the Treasury Select Committee was the Bank's refusal to undertake an internal review of its performance during the financial crisis, meaning the Bank has still not been held properly accountable for its substantial culpability. Such a review would pose difficulties since evidence on how its most senior policymakers arrived at their decisions is destroyed as a matter of course, as are those of the meetings of the interim Financial Policy Committee, which was set up in 2011 as part of the Bank's greater responsibility for financial stability. By contrast, the United States publishes the Federal Reserve's deliberations with a five-year lag, which have provided "the most detailed picture yet of how top officials at the central bank didn't anticipate the storm about to hit the U.S. economy and the global financial system." As in the UK, the US central bank's devastating failure has led to a new regulatory framework, the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, giving more supervisory power.

Response to crisis

King argued that when the financial crisis and bank meltdown hit in autumn 2008, he and other Western central bankers "prevented a Great Depression", in part by cutting interest rates to virtually zero, and The Economist agreed that he "has a point". A 2012 review of actions taken by Western central banks in the face of the crisis also supported King's claim. The Bank has faced criticism, however, for the pace of the rate cuts, which took five months from the beginning of October 2008 to get down from 5.0% to 0.5%, where they have remained since. King also abandoned his institution's remit on keeping inflation around 2%. When becoming only the second Bank of England governor to speak to the TUC in its 142-year history, King conceded, however, that financial firms and policy-makers were to blame for the economic crisis—"We let it slip"—and that people were "entitled to be angry" about unemployment and the bank bailout.

King has been scathing about the banking sector since it crashed, its "breathtaking" £1tn bailout, and its continuation of bonus awards in 2009, calling for a serious review of banking's structure and regulation. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph on 5 March 2011, King said that Banks had "put profits before people", that failure to reform the sector could result in another financial crisis, and that traditional manufacturing industries have a more "moral" way of operating. In an interview with The Times in March 2012, he said that the banks are still in denial about the "very real and wholly understandable" anger that is felt at their behaviour, Bankers have not been happy with his excoriating views and insistence on avoiding moral hazard, but King rightly insists that "arket discipline can't apply to everyone except banks", pinpointing the banks' sense of grievance on their finding it "very, very difficult to face up to the failure of their banking model".

With King's term as Governor ending in 2013, Britain's top banks have seized the opportunity to have a more sympathetic figure in charge of the Bank, issuing their usual threat that, unless a less "hostile" successor to King is found when his term as Governor ends in 2013, they will move abroad. And it looks as though they will be in luck, since Paul Tucker—a man well-liked by the City and who was staunchly in favour of the bailout—is seen as the most likely successor.

Banks bailout

King had faced accusations of refusing funding to the Northern Rock Bank, precipitating a run on that bank, a situation not seen in the UK since 1914. King later said that it had been the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, not he, who had the final word on refusing the necessary help to Northern Rock. In his review of King's tenure as governor, Times journalist David Wighton wrote:

Sir John Gieve, the Deputy Governor for financial stability, . . . was widely seen as the fall guy for the Bank's dithering over Northern Rock a few months earlier. In fact, he had been urging King to act, and his allies accused King of failing to defend him when the chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee accused Gieve of being "asleep in the back shop while there was a mugging out front". Gieve's mother had died at the height of the Northern Rock crisis and he had taken a few days off. King failed to make clear to the committee that this was why his deputy had been away. King's behaviour had been "very bad form", according to one former Bank director.

In his memoirs, Alistair Darling was critical of King for emphasising moral hazard—the doctrine of not saving the banks from the consequences of their own mistakes—instead of rescuing the banks by pumping money into them as the banking-system meltdown occurred in autumn 2008. Despite his refusal to give funding to the retail banks, he retained his job, and submitted in defence to a Treasury Select Committee, (The New York Times, The Financial Times Thursday 20 September 2007) that his actions were on the basis that The Bank of England was the 'lender of last resort' but then subsequently supported all moves to provide funding to those banks which had been nationalised at a cost of hundreds of billions of pounds to the UK treasury and British taxpayer. The apparent U-Turn is underlined by his earlier criticisms of The European Central Bank and The US Federal Reserve for their interventionist policies.

Political interventions

It has been alleged that King's Mansion House speech for 2009 helped to bolster the Conservatives during the approach to the general election by issuing high-profile criticisms. In doing so, King jettisoned the Bank's carefully protected political independence, calling for the break-up of the country's biggest banks, as well as arguing that, unless the Bank was given more active, interventionist powers to ensure financial stability, it would be like a church: able to "do no more than issue sermons or organise burials." Continuing his political foraying, King later advised a rebalancing of the economy, increased saving, and an "elimination of the structural deficit". To achieve the latter, he has consistently supported drastic cuts in public spending in order to staunch the financial crisis, again being criticised for airing such support publicly. In November 2009, he told MPs that the then Labour government's intention of halving the deficit over the next five years was insufficient; in light of developments, it is notable that King is yet to either criticise Osborne or offer Alistair Darling a "generous apology". In April 2010, just before that year's general election, he predicted that the cuts he viewed as necessary would be so severe, and thus so unpopular, that the party that won the election—and which would therefore be responsible for instituting the cuts—would "be out of power for a generation"; and in May 2010, just days after the Coalition government was formed, King said he had spoken to Chancellor George Osborne and supported his plans to cut spending by a further £6bn within the 2010–11 fiscal year. The Liberal Democrats did not need to be talked around to agreeing to the severity of the cuts.

In November 2010, it was revealed that some senior staff at the Bank of England (one of them was David Blanchflower) were uncomfortable with King's endorsement of the government's public spending cuts, accusing him of overstepping the boundary between monetary and fiscal policy. King's support for the government's cuts was in spite of concerns within the Bank that cutting spending so rapidly could derail the UK's nascent economic-recovery. These revelations led to accusations of King being a "coalition courtier" and of making "excessively political" interventions with regard to UK economic policy.

The accusations were given greater weight after the December 2010 WikiLeaks Cablegate. As a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures and David Laws' account of the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition-talks, King was asked by the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee to explain why he was seemingly cited in the talks as backing Tory plans to introduce spending cuts this year. King insisted to the Committee that "at no stage did I offer any advice on the composition of any measures designed to reduce the government deficit"; the Committee implicitly accepted King's explanation of events as he is not even mentioned, let alone criticised, in their final report. According to George Osborne, Gus O'Donnell actually made an offer to have King brief the Tories and Lib Dems during the Coalition's formative talks; however, the parties suspected they "knew what he was going to say and . . . also thought it was more appropriate for our Treasury spokesmen to talk to him".

King was criticised again for political bias, and also for being too academic, when, in May 2012 on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, on the day before an election, he expressed approval of Coalition austerity measures.

In a speech to the European Parliament in Brussels on 2 May 2011, King commented that the Bank of England was more concerned with the broader stability of the economy and banking sector than with inflation figures: "The economic consequences of high-level indebtedness now would become more severe if rates were to rise. It is the main reason why interest rates are so low." With regard to Project Merlin, King was critical of Chancellor Osborne's misleading figures, and correctly predicted in a "light plausibility check" that Merlin would be a failure.

In March 2009, King said any plan for a second fiscal stimulus by the UK Government had to be done with caution.

In his Mansion House speech on 17 June 2009, King criticised Chancellor Alistair Darling for resisting significant changes to the allocation of regulatory responsibilities between the FSA, the Treasury and the Bank, which would have given the Bank greater power to fulfil its role of ensuring economic stability.

In January 2012, King received a letter from the government's former chief scientific adviser Sir David King, Zac Goldsmith, former environment minister John Gummer (and 17 others) warning of the possibility of a carbon bubble. King agreed to an evaluation of the matter.

The BoE's Financial Policy Committee, established to identify emerging bubbles in the financial system, agreed in March 2012 to ask parliament for new policy tools to be used in prevention of another financial crisis. King said that the FPC narrowed its choice of instruments to three—the power to ensure banks have countercyclical capital buffers, the ability to force banks to hold more capital against exposure to specific sectors judged risky, and the power to set leverage ratios—because it will be important to explain to parliament and the wider public why it is or is not using them.

Private life

King's wife, Barbara Melander, is a Finnish interior designer and comes from the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. They were married in a private ceremony in a central Helsinki church in 2007.

King is a fan of Aston Villa F.C., and arranged a game between Bank of England employees and ex-Villa players. He also briefly found himself commentating on an Ashes Test Match for BBC Radio Five Live in 2005, while being interviewed by Simon Mayo. He is the President of the cricket foundation Chance to Shine programme, which fosters competitive cricket in State schools. He is also a member of the AELTC and MCC.

Cambridge University honoured him as an Honorary Doctor of Laws (Hon LLD) in 2006. King is also a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

King is listed as the eleventh most influential person in the Financial Centres International top 500 most influential people in financial centres.

He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours., and his banner is to be displayed with those of other GBEs in St Paul's Cathedral.

References

1. ^ Bank of England profile. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
2. "Sir Mervyn King accepts position of Honorary President of ECC". Ekenäs Cricket Club. 6 February 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
3. ^ O'Grady, Sean (28 March 2009). "Mervyn King: At the top of his game". The Independent. London. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
4. ^ David Wighton (12 March 2012). "The trouble we're in and how to get out of it". The Times. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
5. Chris Blakemore (21 October 2011). "Wolverhampton Grammar School celebrates 500 years". BBC News. Retrieved 14 February 2012.
6. http://keynessociety.wordpress.com/about-the-keynes-society/
7. Stephanie Flanders (13 March 2006). "Were 364 economists all wrong?". Newsnight. BBC. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
8. Stephen King (7 February 2012). "We can't reboot the economy without sacrifice". The Times. Retrieved 7 February 2012. Until the latest episode, the UK's deepest postwar downswing was in the early 1980s. Despite the concerns of 364 economists—including Mervyn King, now the Governor of the Bank of England—who wrote in 1981 to The Times to argue that we were doomed, the British economy staged an impressive rebound.
9. Valentine Low (25 March 2009). "Queen invites Mervyn King, Bank of England Governor, to palace". The Times. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
10. ^ Mervyn King (2004). "Comments on 'Risk and Uncertainty in Monetary Policy' by Alan Greenspan, AEA Annual Conference, 2004" (PDF).
11. Barrell, Ray; Kirby, Simon; Riley, Rebecca (2004). "The Current Position of UK House Prices". National Institute Economic Review. 189 (1). NIESR: 57–60. doi:10.1177/002795010418900105.
12. OECD (2005). "III. Recent House Price Developments: The Role of Fundamentals" (pdf). OECD Economic Outlook 78. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
13. Mervyn King (20 January 2004). "Speech to the Annual Birmingham Forward/CBI Business Luncheon" (PDF). Retrieved 8 March 2011.
14. Mervyn King (14 June 2004). "Speech to the CBI Scotland Dinner at the Glasgow Hilton Hotel" (PDF). Retrieved 8 March 2011.
15. "The global housing boom: In come the waves". The Economist. 16 June 2005. Retrieved 8 March 2011. According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history
16. Reinhart, Carmen M; Rogoff, Kenneth S (2009). This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 160 (see table 10.8). ISBN 978-0-691-14216-6.
17. Gary Duncan (18 October 2007). "UK house market is 'heading for crash'". The Times. London. Retrieved 18 February 2011.
18. OECD (2011). "Chapter 4. Housing and the Economy: Policies for Renovation" (PDF). Economic Policy Reforms 2011: Going for Growth. Part II. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
19. Dean Baker (11 February 2010). "David Ignatius: Mervyn King Is Not Only an Incompetent Central Banker, He Also is a Bad Teacher". The American Prospect. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
20. Howard Davies (23 June 2011). "Chinese Finance Comes of Age". Finance in the 21st Century. Project Syndicate. The authorities in Beijing, especially the CBRC and the People's Bank of China (the real central bank), have a good record of managing incipient booms and busts. . . . They have considerable flexibility, owing to a range of policy tools, including variable capital and reserve requirements and direct controls on mortgage lending terms. They have already been tightening the screws on credit growth for several months, with positive effects.
21. Simon Rabinovitch (18 November 2011). "Housing prices fall in Chinese cities". The Financial Times. Retrieved 24 January 2012. Housing prices in a growing number of Chinese cities fell last month, weighed down by a sustained government campaign to deflate the market.
22. Bloomberg News (21 November 2011). "China Real Estate at 'Tipping Point': Nomura". Bloomberg. Retrieved 28 March 2012. Premier Wen Jiabao said this month that the government won't relax property curbs. The government this year raised down-payment and mortgage requirements and imposed home purchase restrictions in about 40 cities to avert a bubble. The central bank also increased interest rates three times and reserves ratio six times this year.
23. Lex (28 December 2011). "China property". The Financial Times. Retrieved 8 February 2012. China's authorities have spent much of the past two years trying to engineer a slowdown in property prices. Now they have got one. . . . roperty has dropped down the list of top investment options for Chinese households . . . That is what the Politburo wants to see.
24. "China not to loosen regulations on housing market: premier". Xinhua. 14 March 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2012. Premier Wen Jiabao said will not slacken its efforts in regulating housing prices, which he considered still 'far from a reasonable level. If we develop the housing market blindly, a bubble will emerge in the housing sector. When the bubble bursts, not only the housing market will be affected, it will weigh on the entire Chinese economy' .
25. David Wighton (12 March 2012). "The trouble we're in and how to get out of it". The Times. Retrieved 12 March 2012. Sushil Wadhwani, a former MPC member, says the committee could have warned that interest rates would, in future, be set higher than justified by the two-year inflation forecast, which would have dampened house prices. Australia followed just such a strategy.
26. Bernanke, Ben S.; Laubach, Thomas; Mishkin, Frederic S. (2001) . Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience (new ed.). New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-691-08689-7.
27. ^ Mervyn King (17 June 2009). "Speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London at the Mansion House" (PDF). Retrieved 14 March 2012.
28. ^ Ben Chu (23 January 2012). "Osborne set to back Sir Mervyn in bitter battle over Bank rules". The Independent. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
29. ^ David Blanchflower (18 April 2012). "Mervyn King is a tyrant, but who will succeed him at the Bank?". NewStatesman.com. Retrieved 21 April 2012.
30. ^ Claire Jones (23 January 2012). "Records of Bank policy meetings destroyed". The Financial Times. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
31. ^ Jon Hilsenrath; Luca Di Leo and Michael S. Derby (13 January 2012). "Little Alarm Shown at Fed At Dawn of Housing Bust". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
32. "Lessons of the 1930s: There could be trouble ahead". The Economist. 10 December 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
33. Carvalho, Carlos; Eusepi, Stefano; Grisse, Christian (2012). "Policy Initiatives in the Global Recession: What Did Forecasters Expect?" (PDF). Current Issues in Economics and Finance. 18 (2). Reserve Bank of New York. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
34. Larry Elliot (3 February 2012). "Who to blame for the Great Recession? So many big names are in the frame". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
35. "Statistical Interactive Database - official Bank Rate history". Bank of England. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
36. Brigitte Granville (7 March 2011). "Targeting the Targeters". European Economies. Project Syndicate. Retrieved 16 February 2012. There is no mystery about what is going on. The price-stability mandate has been trumped by concerns about growth. The fear is that tightening monetary policy to bear down on inflation could snuff out the faltering economic recovery.
37. Justin Parkinson (15 September 2010). "We let it slip, Bank governor Mervyn King tells unions". BBC News. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
38. ^ Ashley Seager (21 October 2009). "Mervyn King launches blistering attack on £1tn banks bailout". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 February 2012. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
39. Charles Moore (5 March 2011). "We prevented a Great Depression... but people have the right to be angry". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
40. ^ David Wighton (12 March 2012). "Sir Mervyn King: banks still in denial over failures". The Times. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
41. ^ David Wighton (14 March 2012). "The night that King's speech left Labour lost for words". The Times. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
42. "Warning over 'real' anger at banks in Britain". The Independent. Press Association. 12 March 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
43. Robert Skidelsky (3 October 2011). "Back from the Brink by Alistair Darling". New Statesman. Retrieved 17 October 2011. here were runs on the retail banks in 1914.
44. "Mervyn King interview with the BBC's Robert Peston: full transcript". The Guardian. London. 6 November 2007. Retrieved 17 February 2010.
45. Isabel Oakeshott (4 September 2011). "Brown said world's worst financial crisis would last only six months". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 14 February 2012.
46. Philip Aldrick (15 September 2010). "Bank of England governor Mervyn King warns unions accept cuts or 'fail your children'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 Febaruary 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
47. Landon Thomas Jr (6 February 2011). "A Crisis of Faith in Britain's Central Banker". International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 20 February 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
48. George Parker; Jim Pickard; Norma Cohen (17 February 2011). "Balls warns King on Bank credibility". The Financial Times. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
49. ^ Norma Cohen; Chris Giles; Daniel Pimlott (9 November 2010). "Concern that King 'blurs line' on policy". The Financial Times. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
50. Fraser Nelson (24 January 2012). "Osborne owes Darling an apology". The Coffee House. The Spectator. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
51. Larry Elliott (29 April 2010). "Mervyn King warned that election victor will be out of power for a generation, claims economist". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
52. Chris Giles (13 May 2010). "King backs plans to cut deficit". The Financial Times. Retrieved 14 February 2011.
53. ^ Alex Barker (25 November 2010). "Mervyn King's "excessively political" interventions". Westminster Blog. The Financial Times. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
54. Editorial (10 November 2010). "King cannot be the coalition's courtier". The Financial Times. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
55. Norma Cohen; Daniel Pimlott; Chris Giles; George Parker (25 November 2010). "Bank of England divisions are laid bare". The Financial Times. Retrieved 14 February 2011.
56. Patrick Wintour (30 November 2010). "WikiLeaks cables: Mervyn King had doubts over Cameron and Osborne". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
57. Polly Toynbee (1 December 2010). "WikiLeaks: Mervyn King is consistently wrong: now his hawkish dogma has been exposed". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
58. Patrick Wintour (7 December 2010). "Mervyn King asked to face Commons committee over role in coalition talks". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
59. Political and Constitutional Reform Committee (20 January 2011). "Written evidence submitted by Mervyn King, Governor, of the Bank of England.". Fourth Report: Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
60. Political and Consitutional Reform Committee (20 January 2011). Fourth Report: Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
61. "Examination of Witness (Question number 1-36): Rt Hon David Laws". Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election. Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. 14 October 2010. Retrieved 25 April 2012. See Q20 and Q21 plus answers.
62. Phillip Inman (3 May 2012). "Mervyn King backs coalition's economic policies". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
63. Amanda Andrews (3 May 2011). "Bank of England Governor Mervyn King warns on interest rate rise". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
64. Claire Jones (2 September 2011). "Bank governor undermines Project Merlin". Financial Times. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
65. http://optionarmageddon.ml-implode.com/2009/03/25/boe-governor-no-more-stimulus/
66. For King's previous position see Mervyn King (16 June 2004). "Speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London at the Mansion House" (PDF). p. 4. Retrieved 10, March 2011. he Bank of England Act 1998 and the associated Memorandum of Understanding between the Bank, Treasury and FSA on financial stability . . . reed from the responsibilities of day-to-day regulation, the Bank has been able to focus on two principal objectives: maintaining monetary stability and maintaining financial stability. Those objectives are the essence of central banking. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 50 (help)
67. "King and Darling clash on banks". BBC News. 18 June 2009. Retrieved 14 February 2011. he governor had, at one point, been opposed to the idea of the Bank becoming a super-regulator.
68. "Governor seeks more bank powers". BBC News. 18 June 2009. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
69. Damian Carrington (19 January 2012). "Fossil fuels are sub-prime assets, Bank of England governor warned". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
70. Ben Caldecott (6 February 2012). "Carbon bubble: Bank of England's opportunity to tackle market failure". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
71. Richard Blackden (25 March 2012). "Sir Mervyn King says new financial stability tools are 'an experiment'". The Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved 26 March 2012. The FPC is seeking from parliament .
72. "The blonde Finn who melted the heart of Bank of England boss". Daily Mail. London. 22 July 2007.
73. "Friday's gossip column". BBC News. 14 July 2006. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
74. http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/general/prospectus/fellows.aspx
75. http://www.stikeman.com/en/pdf/fci500.pdf
76. "No. 59808". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). 11 June 2011.
77. "Queen's birthday honours list: Knights". London: The Guardian. 11 June 2011. Retrieved 11 June 2011.

External links

• Bank Of England – Biography
• BBC News – Biography
• Debrett's People of Today

Template:Start Monetary Policy Committee Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition bank lifespan Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 1997-July 1997 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition July 1997-September 1997 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition September 1997-December 1997 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition December 1997-June 1998 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 1998-May 1999 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 1999-May 2000 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2000-September 2000 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition October 2000-May 2001 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2001-May 2002 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition May 2002-June 2002 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2002-August 2002 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition August 2002-September 2002 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition September 2002-May 2003 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition May 2003-June 2003 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition bank lifespan Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition July 2003-June 2005 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition July 2005-January 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition February 2006-March 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition April 2006-May 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition July-August 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition September 2006 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition October 2006-June 2008 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition July 2008-February 2009 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition March 2009-April 2009 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2009-August 2009 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition September 2009-July 2010 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition August 2010-May 2011 Template:Monetary Policy Committee composition June 2011- Template:End Monetary Policy Committee composition

Template:Persondata

• Use dmy dates from December 2011
• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from May 2012
• 1948 births
• Academics of the London School of Economics
• Academics of the University of Birmingham
• Academics of the University of Cambridge
• Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
• Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
• English bankers
• English economists
• Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford
• Fellows of the British Academy
• Fellows of the Econometric Society
• Governors of the Bank of England
• Group of Thirty
• Harvard University alumni
• Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire
• Living people
• Monetary economists
• People from Wolverhampton
• People educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School