2 - Very boring guys?

Summary

Rogoff's [conservative central banker] … is a splendid illustration of the humorous definition of an economist as someone who sees that something works in practice and asks whether it can also work in theory. Is there any doubt that central banks in general … have been dominated by quite conservative people?

Alan Blinder (1998: 47)

Felipe Pazos has been replaced as President of the National Bank of Cuba following disagreement with Fidel Castro. He has been replaced by Ernesto Guevara … Guevara, aged 31, is an Argentine, a communist, and is neither an economist nor a banker … He has been a prominent leader of the revolutionary movement and may be regarded as a fellow conspirator of Castro … By this latest move Castro has swept away the last vestige of orthodox authority in the financial field.

(Report on National Bank of Cuba, 1 December 1959, Bank of England Archive, OV162/5)

Che Guevara, whose reign at the National Bank of Cuba was relatively brief (Yaffe 2009), is the most iconic exception to the general rule that central bankers are rather cautious and conservative people. One of the messages of this chapter is that central bankers come in a number of varieties. Some are headstrong, others compliant. Some have strong economic views (whether orthodox or unorthodox), while others are opportunistic. Thus, when Jean-Pierre Roth, chairman of the Swiss National Bank, describes central bankers as ‘very boring guys’ (quoted in Baker and Singer 2006: 64), he is being rather modest.