It's easy to be sniffy about the appointment of Kristin Forbes to the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. Why do we need an American to set our interest rates? If the issue is improving gender balance, then are there no equally well qualified home-grown candidates who could do the job just as well?
There are other, more compelling, reasons for wondering whether Forbes is a good choice. She has no hands-on knowledge of the UK and arrives at a time when the Bank needs to make some big calls and will need to get up to speed fast.
What's more, the MPC is now even more top heavy with career Bank officials, former investment bankers, academics and civil servants, and a bit light on people who actually know what makes the UK economy tick. This is a fair point, although the same could have been said of the MPC at any time since it was set up in 1997.
Forbes is actually a good choice. Firstly, there is no suggestion that UK women candidates have been passed over so that she can get the gig. The Treasury has for years been trying to get more women to put themselves forward to be members of the MPC, with a marked lack of success.
Secondly, Forbes comes with an excellent CV. She is an expert in the contagion that can be caused by inadequately regulated capital flows – a good skill for the Bank to have available to it.
Finally, foreign appointments work out well. The American DeAnne Julius and the Dutch-born Willem Buiter added lustre to the original MPC. Adam Pozen and Danny Blanchflower (a Brit but US-based) were seen as mavericks but got the big calls right.
What mattered was not nationality, but a willingness to challenge the orthodoxy.
