Wim Duisenberg, who died on Sunday aged 70, was the first president of the European Central Bank, and as such had to oversee the birth of the euro.

While he came in for much criticism during his five-year tenure at the ECB--principally for being a poor communicator as well as being too cautious in cutting interest rates--he also deserves credit for establishing, in 1998, a unique multinational institution that has had to function without having the sort of government, or an agreed economic policy for the eurozone, that a central bank can normally call on.