Forget that Sweden's Riksbank and the Bank of England are more than 300 years old a central bank as we know it today is a 20th century invention, a Johnny-come-lately. If a birth date is sought, it must be put in the 1920s, when two remarkable central bankers, Montagu Norman at the Bank of England (where he ruled from 1920 to 1944) and Benjamin Strong at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, gave their profession an enormous boost.

Helping to reconstruct the world's monetary system after the war in Europe, they pioneered the close international co-operation that has become the trademark of central banks. Both men had come from the private sector Strong had worked at the Bankers Trust, Norman at a London merchant bank.