Mervyn King: Monetary policy developments Speech by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, on the 2012 BBC Today Programme Lecture, London, 2 May 2012. *  *  *  Fifty years of rising living standards came to an end with the financial crisis. As a nation, we are now significantly worse off than we were four years ago. The crisis has cast a long shadow. Of course, the immediate challenge is to get our economy growing again. But fifty years from now will our grandchildren ask why we lacked the courage to put in place reforms to stop a crisis happening again? I hope not – and that’s why I want to speak to you tonight about the changes we need to make. Believe it or not, it’s more than seventy years since the Governor of the Bank of England last gave a talk on radio in peacetime. In March 1939, Montagu Norman spoke to the BBC in the wake of the economic slump that we now call the Great Depression. Just listen for a moment to the 1930s version of Evan Davis introducing the broadcast: AUDIO INSERT: “The Rt Honourable Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, speaking in the Empire Series on the City of London.” More the presenter of “yesterday” than “today”! In those days, the Bank of England, known affectionately as the “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street”, was a private bank performing the role of a central bank only by custom and practice.
Here he is, in his first fireside chat, explaining banking to the American people: AUDIO INSERT: “My friends I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking… We have had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers have shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people’s funds. They had used some money entrusted to them in speculation and unwise loans. This was of course not true in the vast majority of our banks but it was true in enough of them to shock the people of the United States for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them in a frame of mind where they did not differentiate but seemed to assume that an act of a comparative few had tainted them all. And so it became the government’s job to straighten out this situation and to do it as quickly as possible and that job is being performed.”  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  We too have had a “bad banking situation”. Roosevelt showed bold and decisive political leadership in explaining to his listeners the reasons why they should not fear banks but trust their Government to ensure that the economy could be saved from the bank failures that had led to the Great Depression. For the sake of future generations, we too must be bold and decisive and, while the memory is fresh, learn the lessons from this crisis. Reform is essential.