It's a big job, but someone's got to do it.
The Financial Times is today carrying an advert for a job which might involve just a modicum of stress. Candidates must have the ability to reinvent the financial rule book overnight and, on recent experience, some weekend work will be required. Meals - well, takeway curries delivered to your desk - may be provided to cover emergency late night sessions.
Sandwiched between an advert for a £60,000 finance manager for the McLaren car engineering group and another searching for a finance chief for a company which does something not quite clear but insists it has "an ambitious an exciting vision" is a sober recruitment notice placed by HM Treasury.
Chancellor Alistair Darling is inviting applications for the post of Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and the successful candidate will be in charge of financial stability.
And not a moment too soon. This search may conjure up images of horses and stable doors, but the perks of this lofty perch include an automatic seat on the interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee and another on the board of City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority.
For those tempted, but not quite sure of the credentials of this potential employer, the advert helpfully points out that "The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom". Candidates, it says, "will need the ability to develop and execute new policies in a fast-moving environment". On recent experience, fast moving means hitting a target which can shift almost by the second.
Successful candidates, it adds, will need to show "strong leadership and influencing skills" - ie the ability to order bank bosses to sit down, shut up and do what they are told, seeing as they got us into this pickle in the first place. They will also be "of undisputed integrity and standing" - ie investment bankers and other high-rolling City slickers need not apply.
In the small print, the Bank naturally points out that it is committed to ensuring a "truly diverse workforce", thought it is not made explicit whether that extends to Icelanders.
It is, in fact not a new job. But the previous candidate, well, came up a bit short. Sir John Gieve, a career civil servant, stepped down after what was widely-judged to be an abysmal performance in front of the Treasury Select Committee when he was summoned to explain the wreck of the Northern Rock. The communications skills demanded in the FT advert, were, shall we say, a little lacking.
And what stipend might the bank's new deputy boss expect? A handsome £240,000 - about double the salary of the Chancellor and £1,000 a week more than the Prime Minister.
Or less than 1% of the whopping wages earned last year by some of the biggest beasts of the banking world - like Barclays' Bob Diamond - that the lucky candidate will be expected to help police.
