Lords of Finance

Posted by Adrian Toll on March 6th, 2009

John Lanchester, in the New Yorker, reviews what sounds like a fascinating book “Lords of Finance” by Liaquat Ahamed, which takes a timely look at the role of central banks and central bankers in the world’s financial markets: Heroes and Zeros

The portrait of Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944, reminded me of a piece from the notebooks of Geoffrey Madan, a well-heeled London socialite with many artistic friends.  (Harold Macmillan, in his introduction to the notebooks, described Madan as having “something of the look of those young men who stand about to no apparent purpose in Renaissance paintings”).

This morning I saw a magnificent sight.  I came up to the City in the Underground rather late, about half-past ten.  At Bond Street a man got in whom I just know, and have spoken to three or four times in my life.

He wore loose clothes, a ringed and jewelled tie, a crumpled black hat.  His general presence made a most distinguished effect, suggesting all manner of romantic things: a Restoration poet, a historic French admiral, a bearded nobleman of Spain – the ideal which everyone would like to think his own great-grandfather  attained, to adapt a famous obituary phrase.  This strange being was in a state of high tension.  He lay back looking half strangled, as it fallen from a great height, or praying to be supported in some heavy trial; darted a glance away, focussing a distant passenger and slowly dropping his chin; glared round with the queer look of a man swelling with laughter and longing to share it with someone else; or groaned aloud in pain.

The carriage was half-full.  A woman rose to get out at a station.  He started and stared in horror, lifting both hands with delicate fingers, and crooning a song as if to calm a child.  Then he fell back, with forehead deeply lined, a flicker of splendid hands, and a magnificent eye very wide open.  Two or three people recognized the Governor of the Bank.  In the inestimable English tradition they smiled faintly, assumed all to be somehow for the best, and let it go at that.The train scraped round the rails at Bank station, and emptied itself.  Last but one, out of the carriage, strolled this enigmatic figure.  He struck out now in some odd rhythm, half-jaunty, half-defiant; bent idly down to peer all round an empty carriage; then slid past a group of people at a double pace: only to halt for a leisurely and mournful study of an advertisement on a wall.  At the end paused again, gazing nobly into the distance, like some fine old Swiss guide watching the signs of a storm.  Soon he strode on and mounted the escalator, alone, like the bridge of a ship, striking a glorious pose – portrait of an admiral in China seas:

Even in the presence of an enemy fleet,
Between the steep cliff and the coming wave.

I thought of the Treasury saying, that the Bank of England acts like a commander in the days before strategy was thought of.

He had no ticket at the bar; and the same instinct which would not stare in the train, would not ask a question as he left the platform.  As well demand a passport from a Czar.  But the ticket was found at last, by its imperial owner, stuck in the band of his soft dark hat.  Sill the drama continued; a chuckle, a tormented backward glance, a sudden scrutiny of forbidden entrances.  At the top, one last proprietary gaze at the vulgar novelties which press on the old symbolic temple of Threadneedle Street.  The traffic was in full flow; it was instantly reined back as he approached: three men saluted.  But the mysterious grandee had already slipped and sauntered out of sight, chin in air.

March 1932