Germany’s School for Central Bankers Draws Risk-Averse Crowd
The Bundesbank’s unswerving commitment to stable money grew out of a bout of ruinous hyperinflation in the 1920s, and it underpinned West Germany’s postwar economic growth. Now the Bundesbank is subservient to the European Central Bank, which sets monetary policy for 19 euro area countries. That has left the Bundesbank with roughly the same official influence within the ECB as a regional Federal Reserve bank has in the U.S.
Even though the size of its staff has been cut in half since the early 1990s, it remains three times the size of the ECB. And it is expanding its university, boosting the size of its incoming class by about 15% in October.
.. In 1992, European Commission President Jacques Delors, a Frenchman, observed that “not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank.”
.. Prof. Keller says the academy offers a good deal for taxpayers. “You have to get people when they don’t know their market value,” he says of the students and would-be central-bank employees. The Bundesbank’s average cost of employment, he argues, is lower than that of its European peers, which must lure professionals from outside.