European central bankers have always used French (“bad French,” some say) in talking with each other, but during the long period in which the pound was the world’s leading currency English came to be the first language of central banking at large, and under the rule of the dollar it continues to be. It is spoken fluently and willingly by all the top officers of every central bank except the Bank of France, and even the Bank of France officers are forced to keep translators at hand, in consideration of the seeming intractable inability or unwillingness of most Britons and Americans to become
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