Hawtrey was adamant that it was precisely in a “democratic age” that technocratic exemption from democracy was “an advantage.” One had to escape “ill judged pressure at critical times,” and especially any opposition to defl ation on the part of workers and business. Indeed, until “a healthy public opinion could ever be evolved on the subject of credit control”— and Hawtrey declared himself agnostic on whether it would ever be possible— “the welfare of the community” depended “vitally upon the technical effi ciency and enlightenment of those who administer the great central banks of the world” (ibid., 244). … Th e eliteness of scientifi c knowledge thus became the means to justify the undemocratic nature of an institution with immense social power and impact on everyone’s lives. Hawtrey’s innocent parallel between the workings of the central banks— which he admitted would “intimately [aff ect] the entire economic life of the country”— and the colonial offi ce governing a colony betrays the fundamental antidemocratic or even repressive content of the austerity project.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1013