Beethoven and the Bank of England

Mervyn King的政策制定凭据已经成熟。剑桥教育经济学家在马萨诸塞州理工学院和伦敦经济学学院授课，国王一直是北京通货膨胀的推动力，作为央行战略，首先是英格兰的首席经济学家银行，然后2003年6月，作为州长。不太众所周知的是他对音乐的热爱，这是他在生活中相对深入发展的激情，以及他与另一个名称的政策制定者，联邦储备委员会主席艾伦格林斯潘。

King likens the bank's Monetary Policy Committee to a string quartet playing Beethoven, for its combination of individuality and collaboration. But unlike Greenspan, the domineering maestro of the Fed, the Bank of England governor considers himself a modest first violinist -- influencing the direction of debate but still only one member of the policymaking ensemble.

King shared his insights about music and money in an interview with Gilbert Kaplan, the founder of this magazine and a world-renowned interpreter of Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony. Kaplan hosts "Mad About Music," a celebrity classical music and interview program that airs on WNYC radio in New York. The following is from a transcript of a broadcast, edited for Institutional Investor, that was scheduled to air this month.

Kaplan：在英格兰，您的每一个举动都是由市场致以仔细校准的线索，即利率，英镑和英国股市发生的情况。越来越少了，是您对音乐的持久热情以及您和音乐如何彼此发现的独特故事。我想我们应该首先要求你讲这个惊人的故事。

King: Well, my story with music got off to a very bad beginning. In Britain it used to be the case that at the age of 11 you would take a competitive aptitude test, I suppose, and that would determine which secondary school you went to. So when I arrived at the first day of my new secondary school, all the new entrants to the school were asked on the first morning to sing up and down a scale, on their own, in turn. We all lined up, I made my attempt, and I failed. I wasn't in the school choir, I wasn't allowed to have lunch in the first sitting, I had to have lunch on the second sitting every day for the rest of my school career, and I was told that I was "not musical." We were divided into two groups -- those who were musical and those who weren't. And for many years I thought that was my fate. Then, years later, I listened to a radio program -- this is only about 12 years ago now -- which said: "Are you tone-deaf? There is no such thing. Listen to this. Here is a recording of a school choir made up of children who are tone-deaf." And it sounded wonderful. So I did something that I always wanted to do, which was to rush out, buy a CD player, buy a CD and listen to it. It seemed to me one of the most passionate things I had ever heard. This was not the complexity or the seriousness of classical music as I might have feared it. It was something that immediately gripped me. And it was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and I went out and I bought the recording. It really caught me, and it still does. I cannot listen to this without feeling the energy and the passion that goes into the music.

所以让我们来比较一下高级金融力量music. As governor, you have the power to influence interest rates. But you're not alone. The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee is made up of nine members, but you chair it. How would you describe your role as the chairman of this committee? Are you more like a conductor -- setting the tempo, driving people to your interpretation -- or would you be more of a true team player, as someone playing chamber music together with your colleagues?

It's much more the latter. But I suppose you could think of it as a string orchestra where I always have the option of standing up and leading the orchestra in a direction on the odd occasions when I think they might need that steer. But usually I would help them start, help to set the pace and the issues that we talk about, but it is one person, one vote.

去年11月本委员会提出了巨大的政策交换机，决定提高利率。它一定是紧张的气氛。早些时候，我问你是否会介绍你的音乐经验，并选择一些可能作为该地标会议的配乐的工作。你想出了什么？

好吧，我想如果我说什么音乐最好代表了货币政策委员会的气氛和风格，那么它可能必须是一个贝多芬字符串四重奏，这是一个晚在的四重奏，因为它结合了知识深度的那个元素和严肃。我们以严重的智力方式讨论经济发生的事情，以及贝多芬的四分之一的描述，一个与之和谐的创新，使英国货币政策委员会成为一个创新。我认为这是世界上第一委员会，这是每个人的这种方法，让他们自己的观点，并在他们投票后只记录并出版他们的投票。因此，我们是货币政策所设定的方式的创新，我们在称为受限制的自由裁量权下运作。也就是说，我们确实提出了自己的判断，而是在被告知的约束范围内击中了展望了精确的通胀目标。我喜欢将贝多芬的字符串四重奏视为想象力和自由裁量权的运动，而是在限制之中：由字符串四重奏的形式奠定的模式，并通过每个单独的球员正在玩自己的乐器，来到他们的自有判断，但尽管如此，他们就是作为一个团队工作，即使他们自己的贡献是个人的贡献，外面世界也将它们视为集体。

You know, one can compare you to Alan Greenspan, who started out to be a musician before he went what I regard as wrong and became an economist. He's actually a graduate of our Juilliard School. Do you and he ever discuss music?

是的，有时。我们讨论音乐和网球。我认为我们都有这些利益，让我们远离经济细节的细节。

What about Tony Blair, your prime minister? Is he passionate about music? Do you ever discuss music with him?

我不知道他对音乐的兴趣是什么，除了他确实扮演吉他而不是很多，而不是小提琴。当然，他的职业生涯是在摇滚乐队而不是乐队。

When we have discussed music, I have been struck by the complete absence of any British composers. No Elgar, no Vaughan Williams, no Benjamin Britten. How can the governor of the Bank of England neglect his own composers?

好吧，我认为我们在英格兰银行拥有悠久的传统，我们认为是最好的。例如，我们没有让我们的员工在英国航空公司旅行，如果这不是最方便的到达那里。正如你所说，我的个人选择不包括英国作曲家。我相信其他人会包括一个。但它应该是一个自由选择和竞争的问题。

I understand you serve on the advisory board of the London Symphony Orchestra. What kind of advice do they want from the governor of the Bank of England?

Well, I don't think it's advice about which music to play.

They're often paid in foreign currency when they travel. Do you give them advice on hedging against the pound?

当然不是，因为我不知道任何货币如何搬家。

现在，当你陷入古典音乐时，你有没有认识任何真正的明星？

不，我没有。我很乐意见面的一个星星是奈杰尔肯尼迪，小提琴手。我喜欢的小提琴有些东西，作为乐器。这是我知道我永远不能玩的，但如果我能演奏乐器，那就是我要去的那个。他是一个相当不寻常的人，并不一直是传统的音乐家。他在他的袖子上磨损了他的情绪，完全在他常常在表演时穿着他最喜欢的足球队的围巾。当然，他最喜欢的足球队，来自英格兰伯明翰的阿斯顿别墅，也是我最喜欢的足球队。

现在,许多英国足球的球队,或者足球,当我们call it in America, are known for their songs, normally sung in unison, even in harmony, by thousands of their fans at matches. I understand that the lyrics of some of Aston Villa's most popular songs contain some shockingly foul language, and I suppose not the lyrics that the governor of the Bank of England should be caught dead singing?

That is true, but I still will persevere in my attempts to get the club to play over the loudspeaker system in the ground as the teams run out, a little extract from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. I think that would really get the players going.

Earlier you described the bank's decision making in musical terms. Have you found any other connection between monetary policy and music?

Well, British monetary policy, rather like my interest in music, came rather late in life. And we had a record in the past 50 years in Britain of a rather unsuccessful degree of monetary policy, and it all changed in the past ten years or so. And it began in 1992, when we left what was called the exchange rate mechanism. We used to have a fixed exchange rate with the deutsche mark. And it all fell apart in September 1992. Now, two days before it all fell apart, I was sent to Frankfurt to meet with the Bundesbank, and we went on what became probably one of the world's most unsuccessful diplomatic missions. We were there to persuade the Germans that the link between sterling and the deutsche mark should be kept. And two days later it was swept away under massive speculation. Now, I mention all this because that was the time when I met, for the first time, Otmar Issing, the German economist who is now the chief economist of the European Central Bank, who was then in the same position at the Bundesbank. And as we approached the building representing Britain on our mission, it was almost a Wagnerian scene. There was thunder and lighting overhead. It really did symbolize something that was going to be very important. But for me the importance was that I met Otmar Issing. Several years later he took me to the Mozart festival at Würzburg, south of Frankfurt, which is his hometown. And that was the first occasion when I heard Mozart's 40th Symphony, one of his late symphonies. I've never forgotten that, my first listening to that.

Listening to you speak so passionately about music makes me wonder if you wish that you could have been a musician instead of an economist.

In some ways, I think I do. I think I would like to have started as a violinist and then become a conductor. I think I would really have enjoyed that. I think the role of conductor combines the ability to be a free spirit -- to use imagination -- as well as to be an intellectual study, which is what I did for most of my life. I've only been at the Bank of England for the past 13 years. The ability to do that, and also to lead a team, just to get a team of people playing for you. That's what I've tried to do at the Bank of England and what I think I would have much enjoyed doing as a conductor. And of course, the great virtue of being a conductor is that you can go on forever.