Was the Bank of England right to lie for its country in 1914?

Published by the R Street Institute.

Jean-Claude Juncker, now the president of the European Commission and then head of the European finance ministers, sardonically observed about government officials trying to cope with financial crises:  “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” The underlying rationale is presumably that the officials think stating the truth might make the crisis worse.

No one would be surprised by politicians lying, but Juncker’s dictum is the opposite of the classic theory of the Roman statesman Cicero, who taught that “What is morally wrong can never be expedient.” Probably few practicing politicians in their hearts agree with Cicero about this. But how about central bankers, for whom public credibility is of the essence?  Should they lie if things are too bad to admit?

An instructive moment of things getting seriously bad enough to lie came for the Bank of England at the beginning of the crisis of the First World War in 1914. At the time, the bank was far and away the top central bank in the world, and London was the unquestioned center of global finance. One might reasonably have assumed the Bank of England to be highly credible.

A fascinating article, “Your country needs funds: The extraordinary story of Britain’s early efforts to finance the First World War” in Bank Underground, a blog for Bank of England staffers, has revealed the less-than-admirable behavior of their predecessors at the bank a century before. Or alternately, do you, thoughtful reader, conclude that it was admirable to serve the patriotic cause by dishonesty?

Fraud is a crime, and the Bank of England engaged in fraud to deceive the British public about the failed attempts of the first big government-war-bond issue. This issue raised less than a third of its target, but the real result was kept hidden. Addressing “this failure and it subsequent cover-up,” authors Michael Anson, et al., reveal that “the shortfall was secretly plugged by the Bank, with funds registered individually under the names of the Chief Cashier and his deputy to hide their true origin.” In other words, the Bank of England bought and monetized the new government debt and lied about it to the public to support the war effort.

The lie passed into the Financial Times under the headline, “OVER-SUBSCRIBED WAR LOAN”—an odd description, to say the least, of an issue that in fact was undersubscribed by two-thirds. Imagine what the Securities and Exchange Commission would do to some corporate financial officer who did the same thing.

But it was thought by the responsible officers of the British government and the Bank of England that speaking the truth would have been a disaster. Say the authors, “Revealing the truth would doubtless have led to the collapse of all outstanding War Loan prices, endangering any future capital raising. Apart from the need to plug the funding shortfall, any failure would have been a propaganda coup for Germany.” Which do you choose: truth or a preventing a German propaganda coup?

We learn from the article that the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, wrote a secret memo to His Majesty’s Treasury, in which he described the Bank of England’s actions as “compelled by circumstances” and that they had been “concealed from the public by a masterful manipulation.” A politic and memorable euphemism.

Is it right to lie to your fellow citizens for your country? Was it right for the world’s greatest central bank to commit fraud for its country?  The Bank of England thought so in 1914. What do central banks think now?

And what do you think, honored reader?  Suppose you were a senior British official not in on the deception in 1914, but you found out about it with your country enmeshed in the expanding world war. Would you choose the theory of Juncker or Cicero?