Exactly three years ago today, on August 9 2007, the European Central Bank shocked the world. As the global financial crisis first blew up, it acted quickly to provide emergency liquidity, pumping in €95bn. The surprise was not so much that rescue action was needed, but that the Frankfurt-based ECB had taken the global lead. Stuffy European institutions were not supposed to be as nimble.

With Europe's banks already then in the eye of the storm, the ECB was fortunate to have an experienced crisis manager as president. Jean-Claude Trichet had handled financial market turmoil since his days as a French treasury official in the 1980s. Trained initially in mathematics and physics, and with a passion for poetry, Mr Trichet has since that fateful day overseen undreamt-of steps by the ECB to shore up the eurozone's banks and economies.

In contrast, the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England have been led through the crisis by economics professors. Ben Bernanke is a world authority on the Great Depression; Mervyn King has a lengthy list of research publications on public finances and financial markets.