MERVYN King, Sir John Gieve and David Blanchflower are all members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. Collectively, they make up one-third of its membership. Their role, in the words of one of them, is to promote monetary and financial stability in the United Kingdom. So, at turbulent times such as these, what have they got to say for themselves?

It seems like only yesterday that commercial banks were the strutting masters of the universe. Now they are going cap-in-hand to their existing shareholders or sovereign wealth funds to rebuild their battered balance sheets. The real economic impacts of the global credit crunch are beginning to be felt in the housing market and elsewhere. Just how bad might it all get?

On Tuesday morning, Mervyn King appeared before MPs on the Treasury committee to explain why he should be reappointed for a second five-year term as Bank of England governor. Two things he said grabbed most headlines. First, he fired an outspoken broadside at the hefty, short-term bonuses routinely paid to bankers in recent years for taking increasingly complex investment risks which have since unravelled in spectacular fashion. But who will curb such excess?

Then King resisted any suggestion that he, as a central banker, should have anything to do with a return to easy credit, especially in the domestic mortgage market. "It would be a serious mistake to go back to where the mortgage market was a year ago," he told the committee, a view which won't endear him to anyone trying to remortgage or fund the purchase of a first home in a marketplace where both lending conditions and price have suddenly become much more onerous.

That same evening, David Blanchflower, an independent member of the MPC and considered by many its arch-dove, delivered a speech to the David Hume Institute in Edinburgh. Blanchflower doesn't much like his avian moniker.

And, in terms of tone, some of his language was anything but dove-like. "In my view, a correction of approximately one-third in house prices does not seem implausible in the UK over a period of two or three years, if house price to earnings ratios are to be restored to more sustainable levels," he warned.

And as an academic who spends half his time in the United States, later in his speech Blanchflower ratcheted up the transatlantic doom and gloom. "More bad news is on the way. I think it is very plausible that falling house prices will lead to a sharp drop in consumer spending growth. Developments in the UK are starting to look eerily similar to those in the US six months or so ago. There has been no decoupling of the two economies - contagion is in the air. The US sneezed and the UK is rapidly catching its cold." Then, on Wednesday, the last of our trio, Sir John Gieve, the Bank's deputy governor for financial stability, suggested the credit crunch has already gone too far. Presenting the Bank's latest financial stability report, Gieve said: "The unavoidable correction after the credit boom is proving protracted and difficult.

"However, the pricing of risk in credit markets seems to have swung from being unsustainably low last summer to being temporarily too high relative to fundamentals. So, while there remain downside risks, the most likely path ahead is that confidence and risk appetite will return gradually in the coming months." Confused? We should be. The stability report warns that banks could still be exposed to significant additional losses, in areas such as commercial property.

On the other hand, it argues that the multi-billion write-downs UK banks have already been making, based on market estimates of what their more dodgy investments are now worth, could be overstating their ultimate losses.

Restoring confidence is key, it claims. And the bank has already done its bit on that front by making at least £50bn available through its Special Liquidity Scheme to help get inter-bank lending going again.

However, confidence also flows from a sense that the main actors in this drama know what the key challenges now are and how best to address them.

From these assorted contributions over recent days, it's far from clear that either the Bank or its interest rate-setting committee is anywhere near that consensus. David Blanchflower wants bigger and faster cuts in interest rates to prevent a downward spiral in economic activity. But two other members of the MPC voted against any cut at all last month, while Blanchflower urged a full 0.5% reduction. One of them, Tim Besley, has described any attempt to use rate cuts to protect living standards from economic shocks as "mistaken".

The governor told MPs it's no part of his job to reignite a housing price boom. But if his deputy manages to convince financial markets the credit crunch and consequential write-offs have already been overdone and business returns to something approaching normal, what's to stop lenders returning to their profligate ways, including a compensation culture that rewards risk-taking and short-term market churn?

In terms of monetary policy, the Bank of England has done well since control over interest rates was handed over to its MPC in 1997. Only once in the first decade did the targeted measure of price inflation stray outside its permitted range. But its core task of maintaining monetary stability is becoming more challenging. Some of the biggest inflationary pressures - energy, food and raw material prices, for instance - are no longer generated within the UK economy. They are increasingly global in origin. And, as a consequence, much harder for national rate-setters to contain.

The contrast with what is happening in the US is sharpening. The Federal Reserve has now brought American interest rates down to 2%, while the Bank is still stuck at 5%. The Fed, however, is formally charged with doing all it can to maintain full employment, as well as stable prices. The Bank's concern for growth and jobs is, at best, implicit in its monetary mandate.

And, while both central banks are charged with maintaining financial stability, it is less than clear that here the Bank has the regulatory tools it needs to deal with the excesses which led to Northern Rock's collapse or the flight from prudent lending elsewhere in the banking system.

Purists will claim that only market forces can sort out the current financial turmoil and sustain market vitality in the banking sector. That is, however, a recipe for renewed excess and a fresh crisis a decade down the line. Effective regulation has a vital role to play. But our present system of regulation isn't up to the job.