You can get kremlinological about these things, but a couple of remarks yesterday by Bank of England governor Mervyn King raised the intriguing thought that he may have fallen out with Chancellor Brown.
First, in a statement at the start of his press conference, Mr King noted that his interest-setting committee has just held its 100th monthly meeting.
"In true cricketing tradition," he went on, "we acknowledge our century and then, provided the management does not instruct us to declare, get our heads down to make another hundred".
Well, well. Whoever suggested there was the tiniest question of the management doing anything of the sort? On the contrary, making the Bank independent to fix interest rates is widely regarded as the cleverest and most successful thing the Blair/Brown Government has done.
Later, after some arcane chit-chat about the uncertainty caused by revisions to official statistics, someone asked what the governor thought of the Treasury's discovery that the economic cycle started in 1997 instead of 1999 - a much-derided shift that frees Mr Brown to borrow an extra #10 billion without breaking his "golden rule".
Mr King came straight out: "We have a different view about the cycle. Whatever happened seven or eight years ago doesn't change the fiscal position."
What, with statistical revisions: "We don't even know where the economy was a year ago. That will be revised. Indeed, the Chancellor doesn't even know where it was seven or eight years ago."
These were throwaway remarks. They didn't sound premeditated. Anyway, with an independent Bank you are going to get an independent-mouthed governor every now and then.
Yet this was the same governor King who a couple of years back staunchly refused to criticise Mr Brown's foolish decision to switch his inflation target to a European cost of living index that leaves out all the expenses of home ownership.
The tone has changed. And the management won't like it.
