THE Premier League’s transfer window does not open until January but George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, has done some early dealing. Mark Carney, currently the head of Canada’s central bank, will be the Bank of England’s new governor, when Sir Mervyn King steps down next June. “He is quite simply the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world to do the job,” said Mr Osborne in a press statement. This is somewhat like saying Lionel Messi, Barcelona’s striker, is the best man to lead Arsenal’s attack: the hyperbole is warranted; it is just that few ever thought Mr Carney, like Mr Messi, could be hired by another team.

The case for getting in a star from another country was powerful. From next year the Bank of England will resume the job of supervising and regulating individual banks. It will be given “macro-prudential” tools, such as tweaking bank-capital requirements over the business cycle, to keep the financial system safe. And it will continue to set monetary policy to control inflation. Mr Carney knows a lot about all three aspects of his new job. He has international pedigree. He chairs the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the body that has become an executive arm of the G20, and whose previous chief was Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank.

His other great virtue is that he is an outsider, both to the bank and to Britain. Paul Tucker, who had been favourite for the job, is the closest home-grown candidate to matching Mr Carney’s skills set. But as one of the bank’s senior executives, he is tainted by its past failings, however unfairly, including its slow initial response to the financial crisis. Mr Carney, by contrast, will bring some welcome fresh air to an institution that has often seemed insular and with too strong a hierarchy to allow challenges to its closely held articles of faith.

It helps that on Mr Carney watch, Canada has been one of the few rich countries to have come through the financial crisis largely unscathed. He is a good communicator, and diplomatic skills will be needed to mediate conflicts between the bank’s various policy arms.

Mr Osborne has pulled off a coup by hiring him, but there are risks in any appointment. Although several foreign-born economists have already served on the bank’s monetary-policy committee with distinction, it is a different challenge being the face and voice of the central bank. Mr Carney may have judged that so depressed are spirits about the British economy, that any bad news he has to deliver will not be blamed on him. A more uncomfortable precedent is that the Bank of Canada now has to fill his boots (Mr Carney’s term was due to end in 2015). If President Obama came calling when Ben Bernanke’s term at the Federal Reserve ends in January 2014, could the Bank of England refuse to release him, having itself poached him from another central bank?

One of Mr Carney’s first challenges in Britain is to persuade Mr Tucker, who has invaluable experience and know-how, to stay on as the deputy governor in charge of financial stability. Mr Tucker has spent his whole career at the bank but may feel that a big-money transfer to the City may be the best way to salve his wounded career plans. That would be a pity. So vast is the bank’s new remit, that no single person can manage it adequately. Mr Carney will need all the help he can get.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/bank-englands-new-governor

We have a great lesson to learn by simply appointing competent candidates who have no choice but to perform.

bayooooooo:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/bank-englands-new-governor

We have a great lesson to learn by simply appointing competent candidates who have no choice but to perform.

sorry but your leaders have to, first of all, do a course in recognizing competence, then in accepting competence, afterwards, in appointing competence and finally, in allowing competence operate.
then we can start talking.