来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2022年5月18日
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has faced criticism for comments he made at the Treasury select committee. He suggested that workers should not ask for a pay rise, warned of “apocalyptic” global food price rises, and agreed that he felt “helpless” to control inflation. The remarks have been described in turn as out-of-touch, alarmist, and troubling.
英格兰银行行长安德鲁·贝利因在财政部特别委员会发表的言论而受到批评。他建议工人们不应该要求加薪，警告说全球食品价格会出现“末日般”上涨，认为自己对控制通胀感到“无助”。这些言论被形容为脱离实际、危言耸听和令人不安。
The Bank certainly should not feel helpless about inflation. One of its central duties is to keep price rises low and stable, and if it does not think it can do that, then many will ask what the point of it is. True, some trends are out of its control. But it is not good enough to blame the lockdowns for all our economic woes. The Bank’s critics claim that groupthink on the rate-setting committee resulted in complacency about the consequences of massive money-printing, such that it was unable or unwilling to correctly identify the scale and longevity of the inflation threat.
英国央行当然不应该对通胀束手无策。它的核心职责之一是保持价格的低增长和稳定，如果它认为自己不能做到这一点，那么许多人会问它存在的意义是什么。没错，有些趋势是它无法控制的。但把我们所有的经济困境都归咎于封锁是不够的。英国央行的批评者声称，利率制定委员会的团体迷思导致了对大规模印钞的后果的自满，以至于它无法或不愿正确地识别通胀威胁的规模和持续时间。
The case is surely quite strong now for further increases in interest rates, notwithstanding the effect that might have on the government finances. Given that the Bank has been accused of effectively monetising government debt, a series of rate rises could be a good way of showing that it is indeed as independent as it claims.
目前，进一步加息的理由肯定相当充分，尽管这可能会对政府的财务状况产生影响。鉴于英国央行被指责有效地将政府债务货币化，一系列加息可能是一个很好的方式，表明它确实像它所宣称的那样独立。
But politicians, too, need to be much better at holding the central bank to account. Many of them have lost interest in macroeconomics, despite the power that the Bank possesses to determine the course of millions of lives. The public should not have to take central bankers’ word for it that they are doing their job properly. They are not the “masters of the universe” that they sometimes imagine themselves to be.
但政客们也需要在让央行承担责任方面做得更好。许多央行高管已经对宏观经济学失去了兴趣，尽管央行拥有决定数百万人生命轨迹的权力。公众不必相信央行行长的话，认为他们在正确地履行职责。他们并不是他们有时想象的“宇宙的主人”。