It was Strong more than anyone else who invented the modern central banker. When we watch Ben Bernanke or, before him, Alan Greenspan or Jean-Claude Trichet or Mervyn King describe how they are seeking to strike the right balance between economic growth and price stability, it is the ghost of Benjamin Strong who hovers above him. It all sounds quite prosaically obvious now, but in 1922 it was a radical departure from more than two hundred years of central banking history.
