With political pressures encroaching on the bank’s policy decisions and a faux consensus, it is not surprising that there is now nostalgia in Frankfurt for earlier times and for Wim Duisenberg, even among his former critics. Duisenberg’s great skills – under-appreciated by the press and public alike – were genuine consensus-building in a potentially divisive body and, in Trichet’s own words, “an exceptional ability to keep his nerve in some highly demanding and extremely hostile environments.”