Signal honour
THE knighthood for the Government Broker is as fitting as his refulgent top hat, but may, alas, be the signal that he will soon hang that hat up. Sir Nigel Aithaus's full job description is First Broker to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt. There have been Brokers and Commissioners for the two centuries since they were set up by William Pitt who went on to make their task impossible, financing the Napoleonic Wars on bor- rowed money and expanding the National Debt as never before. Other wars, other governments, other debts. Sir Nigel is the only Government Broker in my day who has lived up to his job description, and I fear that he will be the last of the true line, for the post has been absorbed into the Bank of England and it is not clear how much more than the formal title will survive. I once heard him (before he was appointed) lecture on investing in govern- ment stock, and caution his audience against making any assumption which was based on what ministers seemed to intend. He quoted from S. J. Simon's Why You Lose At Bridge the advice not to double bad Cpalookal players on their bidding: 'If they don't know what they're doing, how can you?' No doubt Sir Nigel was thinking of Pitt.
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