How to be a Finance Minister (Florence Nightingale Might Have Liked)

April 27, 2011 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook, April 27 2011:

Subroto Roy reflects on what the role is of a Finance Minister/Treasury/Exchequer head: it is to be, at least, the Chief Financial Officer of the country.

And what does a good CFO do?

Preserve, if not enhance or at least not worsen, the “financial condition” of the entity in his charge, namely, the asset/liability, income/expenditure, and cashflow positions, plus the goodwill etc.

Of course the financial condition of a country’s Exchequer depends on the financial condition of each and every public entity that adds up to the whole (and less directly on the financial condition of private entities).

Good Finance Ministers should definitely stay away from TV (waffling on endlessly on TV trying to explain one’s economic model is a sure sign of an incompetent FM), probably stay away from most conferences, their favourite word has to be “No” or perhaps “No, I’m sorry”, their resignations need to be typed, signed & ready in their desk-drawer, only needing to be dated at the top.  The same a fortiori for Central Bank heads (except for the ready-resignation part).

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) revolutionized nursing by implementing her slogan “Whatever else hospitals do, they should not spread  disease”.

Economists and Finance Ministers should seek, at least, at a minimum, to do no harm.

Posted in Economic Policy, Economic quackery, Financial Management, Florence Nightingale. Leave a Comment »

Maynard Keynes on How to Be a Good Economist

April 11, 2011 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook, April 11, 2011

Since the name of Keynes is back to being used somewhat in vain around the world, it may be appropriate to recall Maynard Keynes’s description of his own role-model as an economist, his master Alfred Marshall.

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.  Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science?  Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds.  An easy subject , at which very few excel!  The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare *combination* of gifts.  He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together.  He must be mathematician, historian, statesman and philosopher — in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood: as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.”

JM Keynes “Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924″ in Memorials of Alfred Marshal, edited by AC Pigou, 1925, p. 12.

Keynes himself was trained as and always thought like a mathematician, though he invariably spoke in words about practical realities. Marshall was his master, and so too, to a lesser extent, was his father, Neville Keynes.

Posted in Academic economics, Academic research, Alfred Marshall, Cambridge Univ Economics, Economic Policy, Economic Theory, John Maynard Keynes, John Neville Keynes, Microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics, Philosophy of Economics, Political Economy. Leave a Comment »
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