The sluggish global economy needs to reform – and fast
Mervyn King's IMF speech turned heads - dangerously little has changed since the 2008 financial crisis
They were all there. Mario Draghi, in his last few weeks as president of the European Central Bank before handing over to Christine Lagarde; Mark Carney, who will be leaving the Bank of England in January provided the UK government ever finds the time to appoint a new governor; and Jay Powell, the man Donald Trump now deeply regrets ever choosing to run the Federal Reserve.
Yet all these members of the financial elite were upstaged by someone who retired from the central banking fraternity six years ago. Lord Mervyn King showed up in Washington to give the Per Jacobsson lecture, a showcase occasion at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, and proceeded to make by some distance the most arresting intervention of the week.
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