So the FPC and PRA are to align with the MPC in a ménage à trois, which — like most ménages à trois — may prove interesting. Of obvious importance is to know who will be boss. On closer inspection, it turns out that none of them is the real capo dei capi. According to the 2009 Banking Act, the Bank of England has a Court of Directors "to manage affairs other than the formulation of monetary policy". The Bank's website tries to reassure, saying that the 2009 Act introduced "reforms" which "modernised" and "formalised" the Court's arrangements.  

The Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee cannot, in practice, be independent of each other or take separate decisions. If the FPC resolves to increase banks' capital/asset ratios that will have important monetary effects; if the Monetary Policy Committee determines to purchase corporate bonds one outcome might be to strengthen company balance sheets, which affects financial conditions. The MPC can do "financial" things and the FPC can do "monetary" things. They must cross-check and interact constantly. To put it bluntly, they would be best merged into one committee.

The Prudential Regulation Authority may collect the data on individual banks' loan quality and that is definitely a job that has to be done somewhere, but what exactly is its role? Will its officials now decide to lend to cash-troubled banks or does that job remain with the Governor (or indeed the chairman of the FPC or even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he happens to be in the vicinity of Threadneedle Street)? 

A standard practice of bureaucracies is to believe that action constitutes recommending new committees — particularly "committees of experts" — that are supposed "to do something" in an area of recent policy failure. The new committees are announced in press releases which, regardless of policy area, use an almost identical vocabulary. Typical nouns include "modernisation", "reform",  "independence" and so forth, with "radical" serving as an all-purpose adjective. Does one have to remark that, in the present crisis, this tendency to multiply committees (promoted with such indistinguishable press releases) has gone to extremes? And is it meant to suggest that the proliferation of committees is not a sign of improvement, but of uncertainty?