And as I was reading about him, I started wondering how he would have felt about me—a President of De Nederlandsche Bank— being chosen to give the lecture called by his name. Schoo was primarily a political thinker, with an acute sensitivity to the deeper currents running through society. Economics did not feature prominently in his work.
But there was something else that struck me about Hendrik Jan Schoo. And here I will quote from Marc Chavannes’s description of him: “Schoo was a selfmade man, from an everyday background. Reluctantly absorbed into the elite, he remained overtly concerned about the risks ordinary people face.” That last sentence resonated with me, because I realised that also fits my job description.