Mervyn Lamont.

• Position: OFF THE NEWS - Brief article

The recent subprime global credit crisis has hardly boosted the credibility of Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England. Throughout the initial stages of the global credit meltdown, as both European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke massively injected liquidity into the financial system, King took the passive approach with what appeared to be a smugness toward the perceived panic by his international central bank counterparts. Then the British bank Northern Rock began to hit the credit skids. Newspaper stories showed desperate depositors a la the 1930s lined up outside bank branch offices. British commentators began accusing King of actually contributing to Northern Rock's problems through the BoE's hands-off approach. Eventually an embarrassed Bank of England was forced by the government to step in and rescue Northern Rock, but not before British commentators began drawing comparisons between King's handling of the credit crisis in...