A good man for an impossible job

Madsen comments on the new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. He is, says Madsen,

probably the best candidate to perform an impossible job.  He had a good record in Canada, which weathered the financial storm better than most.  He has sound views on controlling inflation, and on controlling public spending rather than distributing a largesse of newly printed and borrowed money.

His basic problem remains that the system of centralized control of a monopoly fiat currency may not be up to the task of servicing a modern economy without the wild swings induced by political oversight.  Competing currencies, some commodity-backed, and with market interest rates, might be a better model.  Carney would indeed go down in legend if he were able peacefully to transform the one system into the other.

To that I would add that Carney has been remarkably open-minded about both Austrian and NGDP-focused stories about the crisis. He certainly seems like a good appointment, but the task required of a central banker is a godlike one: to avoid disequilibrium between savings and borrowing, he must be omniscient about people's money demand and plans for the future. However able Carney might be, I'm not sure if that's a job that anyone can do.