Heading the UK's central bank in 2011 is admittedly a role only a committed sadomasochist would solicit. For the last four quarters, the Bank has downgraded its 2011 growth forecasts. It has now downgraded its 2012 forecast as well. Even on newly diminished forecasts, "the risks are skewed to the downside". Absent stubborn inflationary problems, any central bank in this position would be cutting rates, not raising them. But the Bank is, even amongst its developed market peers, almost uniquely exposed to two colossal problems, given the outsized role of property and financial services within its economy. On the one hand, it has been forced to sacrifice broader national interests order to keep the banks' life support system and its associated stimulus operational. On the other, it has to be mindful of the grotesque state of our national finances (where responsibility is shared between reckless banks and the feckless socialists of the previous administration). Who on earth would want to try and pilot the UK economy and its still unreconstructed banking system between Scylla and Charybdis?