Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of Esharp Magazine. Go to eSharp.U for free access to all the podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson. I'm in conversation with Sir Paul Tucker. Paul Tucker is the chair of the systemic risk council and a fellow at the Harvard

Kennedy School of Government and the author of a brand new book, Unelected Power, The Quest for

Legitimacy in central backing and the regulatory state. Now I warn you in advance, Paul, this is going to be

a kind of a layman's conversation because I think the world you inhabit is replete with

jargon and acronyms, slightly early into the outside world.

But certainly your book is extremely well-timed.

It's 10 years after the financial crisis.

I know ostensibly your book is not about the financial crisis per se,

but nonetheless extremely timely.

So what did you set out to achieve when you embarked on this pretty major exercise in your new book?

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on this podcast, Paul.

And it's important to discuss things in lay terms.

The book isn't aimed at technocrats.

Why did I write it?

I wrote it for two reasons that came together.

The first and more local one is that, the more personal one, is that after the financial crisis, the institution

for which I then worked, the Bank of England, was given a lot more powers. And we resisted,

successfully resisted some powers that some influential people wanted us to have.

And we resisted them because we thought that we ought not to become too powerful.

We were worried about becoming too powerful.

And for the same reason that the powers that we were given, we were insistent that they be constrained

in various ways.

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