Why is Europe’s central banker giving lectures on Proust?

I just stumbled across the text of today’s speech by Jean-Claude Trichet (pdf), the head of the European Central Bank, expecting a heady, technical disquistion on how the financial crisis is affecting European economies and just what he intends to do about it. Or perhaps a passionate cris de coeur for better financial regulation. But ...

I just stumbled across the text of today's speech by Jean-Claude Trichet (pdf), the head of the European Central Bank, expecting a heady, technical disquistion on how the financial crisis is affecting European economies and just what he intends to do about it. Or perhaps a passionate cris de coeur for better financial regulation.

I just stumbled across the text of today’s speech by Jean-Claude Trichet (pdf), the head of the European Central Bank, expecting a heady, technical disquistion on how the financial crisis is affecting European economies and just what he intends to do about it. Or perhaps a passionate cris de coeur for better financial regulation.

But no. Speaking at the Center for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, M. Trichet waxed eloquent about the likes Dante, Prout, Goethe, and Derrida. A sample:

Dante brings to Italy the “terza rima”, or triplet rhyme, which structures the poem in tercets closely linked to the preceding and following rhymes, so that a rhyme is never introduced that has not been framed by two earlier rhymes, with the exception of the first tercet of the canto. This new verse form – which creates an impression of fast, breathless movement, while offering the permanence of an unchangeable structure – was to be an instant success: Boccaccio and Petrarch adopted it immediately. Dante himself borrowed it from another language, Provençal: the “sirventès”, a lyric form which goes back to the troubadours used the “terza rima” or triplet rhyme. It was another example of the felicitous influence of a crossover between two forms of vernacular language: Provençal and Italian.

I have nothing against erudition. I like my central bankers literate. But shouldn’t the man be focusing on, um, saving Europe from economic catastrophe right now?

Economists at Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have criticized Trichet for not clarifying what the ECB may do at a time when the Bank of England and Federal Reserve are already buying assets such as commercial paper and government bonds to ease credit conditions.

“We are in an ongoing process of studying further measures and assessing the possible need for them,” Trichet said today in a speech to business leaders in Paris. 

Maybe a little less Dante and a little more Deutsche Bank would help move things along?

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