And another thing we both remembered: How many had predicted total and utter disaster. This new currency for Europe, this EURO, with no track-record and 11 different national interests to tear at it ... it would get slaughtered in the markets. Its freshly inaugurated central bank, this "baby of a central bank", as Issing called it, would have to scramble for cover to avoid being gunned down in the barrage of the first day or days trading.

Well, guess what? Didn't happen. The ECB still stands - in more ways than one. Its currency, ten years down the road, is world reserve currency number two. In fact, even today, in some ways, reserve currency number one! Since the rapid appreciation of the Euro against the Dollar, this "new kid of the block" has long surpassed the greenback (in 2006, in fact) in terms of total value of currency in circulation. There are more euro-denominated bonds in the world than dollar ones.

And, apart from the 15 countries - we started with 11, remember? - that are part of the Euro zone, it's the official currency of five other countries, the UN official currency of six more and ten currencies have been pegged to the euro.

So, whatever the doubts and criticism, it looks very much as if the euro were here to stay. And so is the ECB. I, for one, am jolly glad ... Not only, because it guarantees my job ... ;-)

Because if you got used to crisscrossing through the better part of Europe without passport controls and without having to change currencies at every corner - well, then you do see the benefits only too clearly.

What about the future? What about those - like Denmark or the UK - who chose NOT to join the Eurozone? I leave you with a quote from a Briton, a former member of the Bank of England policy-making council, the MPC, no less. "They'll all join", says Willem Buiter, afore-mentioned former MPC member. "First Denmark, then Sweden and then there are three that aren't even in the European Union yet. Norway, Switzerland and Iceland. Of those, Iceland will undoubtedly come first because they have discovered what it's like to try and have an international banking system when you have a country the size of Coventry in terms of population. It's not to be recommended. But... they will all be sucked in basically, because it makes too much economic sense."

Quite. That doesn't mean it's going to be safe sailing. For a central bank and its currency it never is.

In any case: Happy birthday, ECB!

Oh, and when Otmar Issing's book about the Euro "Der Euro. Geburt – Erfolg – Zukunft" gets published in English in autumn, do read it. I promise, you shall learn a thing or two.

Needless to say, I've got my (German) copy, signed by the man himself!

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