Derick Latibeaudiere was not known to venture too often from his high-rise office on the waterfront, and was not known to mingle much in public.

Central bankers rarely do; they are usually above it all.

But Latibeaudiere often found himself in the headlines; sometimes to defend his policies, sometimes to push back on his critics, but also because of a public fascination with the multimillion-dollar perks he received as head of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ).

But through it all, he retained a level of respect for his performance as 'The Governor'.

Since the change of government at the close of summer 2007, the rumours refused to die that the Bruce Golding administration would have loved to see the back of Latibeaudiere, even though he was considered good at his job.

There was, as it emerged, conflict between the conduct of fiscal policy and monetary policy.

Twice, the 13-year BOJ governor dismissed suggestions that he was leaving the BOJ. On Friday, however, there were no more denials. He's gone - with barely an explanation from the Golding administration or Finance Minister Audley Shaw.

The governor's departure came at the twilight of ultra-sensitive negotiations with the International Monetary Fund that were rumoured to be going off-track.

Here are excerpts from some of the stories that The Gleaner has presented on Latibeaudiere in his 13 years as central bank governor:

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Negotiation by video

Bank of Jamaica Governor Derick Latibeaudiere rejected as "laughable" thinly veiled suggestions that his absence from talks in Washington with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was indicative of any sort of rift with the administration.

He argued that those who made such charges failed to appreciate technological advances and the efficiencies they created.

The governor was equally contemptuous of talk that he and the Ministry of Finance had a difference over interest-rate policy, and that he was about to demit office in protest.

"That is pure foolishness!" said Latibeaudiere. Any suggestion that he was about to quit, he added, "would be a pipe dream".

However, the BOJ governor did not claim to be in total agreement with the Ministry of Finance - adding that fiscal and monetary authorities often are not - but where the IMF negotiations were concerned, he added, the two were in concert.

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High interest rate crisis

THE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed grave concerns about Jamaica's high interest rates.

Finance Minister Audley Shaw told The Sunday Gleaner that the issue was a major one for the multilateral institution but declined to say whether a reduction was among the conditionalities it was demanding.

"The interest rates is a concern of the IMF, as it ought to be a concern to everybody in Jamaica, including the people who lend money to the Government of Jamaica," Shaw said.

"Interest rates have to go down. There are no justifiable reasons why the interest rates have to be where they are when the inflation rate annualised now is less than 12 per cent," Shaw said.

The decision by central bank governor Derick Latibeaudiere to increase interest rates last year was a bitter pill for the finance minister.

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Questionable loans from the central bank

MONTHS after news surfaced that Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Derrick Latibeaudiere had borrowed $51 million from the bank to construct a house, furnish and landscape the grounds, without providing evidence that the loans had been properly collaterised, the Auditor General's Department has indicated it is still awaiting proof of security.

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) attempted to bring closure to the controversial issue.

The committee was told that as at Tuesday, May 26, no document had been presented to the Auditor General's Department to indicate that a formal loan agreement between the bank and the governor had been settled.

Committee chairman, Dr Omar Davies, instructed both the Auditor General's Department and the central bank to iron out their differences "expeditiously" and to report back to the committee.

Rudolph Muir, general counsel and corporate secretary of the bank, who appeared before the PAC, sought to set the record straight.

He said $30 million of the loan was fully secured against a four-bedroom house in Belvedere, upper St Andrew, owned by the BOJ governor and his wife. He said this property, with a market value of $32 million, as at 2008, was the former official residence of the governor.

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Rebuff of the manufacturing sector

Under pressure from private-sector leaders to immediately begin a rollback of interest rates, central bank Governor Derick Latibeaudiere hit the ball back into the court of his critics.

"If the interest-rate signal is there in the next Treasury-bill auction and I saw clearly that people were prepared to accept lower interest rates, and if there is stability in the exchange-rate system as exhibited by responsible bidding and selling, that would be a basis to start the process," Latibeaudiere declared during an interview on the Power 106 FM programme Real Business.

He was responding to private-sector leaders who blasted the Bank of Jamaica over its decision to hike interest rates to defend the Jamaican dollar, which has lost more than 20 per cent of its value since last September.

"In order to deal with demand, you have to introduce tighter fiscal policies and/or higher interest rates. There is hardly any option there.

"It is not like there is a set of options that the technical team can't see or implement," Latibeaudiere charged.

BOJ boss calls JMA loan idea 'nonsense'

Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, Derick Latibeaudiere, is dismissing a recommendation from the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association (JMA) that the central bank use $2 billion of its statutory cash reserves for lending to the manufacturing sector.

The JMA made the suggestion during a press conference at which it complained about the negative impact of the central bank's high interest-rate policy.

However, Latibeaudiere scoffed at the suggestion which, he said, was not practical.

"That is nonsense, because you do have the cash reserves because you are trying to mop up liquidity. So, to suggest that you put liquidity out there, that is nonsense!" he told The Gleaner.

Governor says Jamaica weathering global shocks

The central bank has lowered its forecast for growth and raised expectations for inflation as government economic analysts coalesce around the position that the global credit crisis and higher commodity prices have hurt, though not devastated, the Jamaican economy.

"For the fiscal year 2008-09, the bank is now forecasting that the domestic economy will grow in the range of 1.2 per cent to 2.2 per cent," Derick Latibeaudiere, the governor of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) told journalists. "That is a downward trend from our previous forecast."

At the same time, Latibeaudiere set his new inflation target at between 15 and 17 per cent, up from the 11.5 per cent, to 14.5 at the end of the March quarter.

He warned of continued BOJ vigilance against inflation, defended the bank's half-point rise of signal rates in June, and was confident that the central bank was getting its policy mix right to achieve the twin challenge of keeping inflation at bay and maintaining a stable but competitive currency.

Here to stay

Any suggestion that he would be demitting office as head of the central bank as a result of pending changes to the political administration is totally without foundation and even mischievous, says Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Derick Latibeaudiere.

He said, too, that the bank was unlikely to change policy direction under the new administration.

In the pre-election campaign, rumours flew that the central banker was likely to leave the job if the Jamaica Labour Party won, and that his replacement would either be a top politician or a high-profile banker.

But Latibeaudiere, in an interview with the Financial Gleaner on Wednesday, said he still had four years remaining on his current contract, and had given no thought to leaving.

Latibeaudiere has been with the BOJ for some 33 years, and its governor for the past 12.

In his own words

Throughout the long history of financial markets, there have been a number of banking and financial crises that have severely disrupted economies. There is no reason for us to believe that there will be an end to these disruptions in an era of continuing technological change and innovation.

What is, therefore, important is that we continually seek to prevent and mitigate future crises. This we can do with a blend of sharp analysis, keen judgement, practical experience and a rigorous understanding of the workings of financial markets in both normal and abnormal times.

I believe that this is what defines effective banking supervision. It is also this rigorous understanding of the operations of financial markets that is of critical importance to the development of macroeconomic policy, inclusive of monetary policy.

- Derick Latibeaudiere

BOJ wanted full authority over $1.2 trillion financial sector

Jamaica's central bank chief, Derick Latibeaudiere, wants one regulatory authority for all financial institutions, saying he will be pushing for full oversight to be brought under the ambit of the Bank of Jamaica.

"My preference," said Latibeaudiere to his colleagues gathered in Montego Bay, "is for an integrated and autonomous supervisory authority within the central bank."

Latibeaudiere is not denying that the Financial Services Commission's creation has made supervision more efficient, but says the linkage between the two was critical for continuous improvement in the analysis and management of risk.

"There are good reasons to believe that such an arrangement would significantly benefit the financial system as a whole," he said. "After all, price stability and financial stability go hand in hand, and prudence is intrinsic to central banking as it is to financial stability and supervision."

NOTE: The governor later pulled back from the proposal that would have changed the structure of the financial regulatory system, and was a convert to deeper information sharing with the Financial Services Commission and others as the way to police against systemic risk, he told The Gleaner.

Expensive house empty

The official residence of the Governor of the Bank of Jamaica was brought under the microscope in 2003 when then Opposition Minister Audley Shaw screamed at the piece of "fiscal recklessness" that caused $56 million to be spent on the house that remained unoccupied after four years.

In his Budget Debate presentation that year, Shaw said in 1998, the BOJ purchased a house at 15 Bracknell Avenue, off Jacks Hill Road, St Andrew, at a cost of $21 million for use as the official residence of the BOJ Governor, Derick Latibeaudiere.

Four years and millions of dollars in refurbishing costs later, the governor had still not taken up residence in the house.

Mr Shaw said the house needed repairs prior to being occupied, but it was left unrepaired for several years, and was finally completed and furnished years later at a cost in excess of $25 million.

Further refurbishing of the house was also expected to be carried out at an additional cost of $7 million.

Vindication

Derick Latibeaudiere believes the recent downward movements in domestic interest rates represent a vindication of his policy of a slow, measured reduction of rates - a stance that was the source of tensions earlier this year between the central bank and the finance ministry.

"Whatever interest-rate path the bank pursued was absolutely correct," Latibeaudiere told reporters and market analysts at a briefing.

In the past month, Latibeaudiere, the Bank of Jamaica governor, has twice cuts rates on the Bank of Jamaica's benchmark instruments by a total of 2.5 percentage points.

But even with the cuts, which brought interest rates down to 19 per cent at July 30, they are still tracking more than four points above the 14.7 per cent that prevailed one year ago.