Belgium's unsackable central bankers

THANKS TO Alain Destexhe, a Belgian senator (and that rarest/loneliest of beings, a Belgian free market liberal), for today's fact of the day. Mr Destexhe reports on his blog that the Belgian central bank still employs more than 2,000 people, even though it has not had a currency to oversee since 1999, when Belgium joined the euro.
The senator, a medical doctor who used to be a big wheel with Médecins Sans Frontières, notes that the survival instinct of Belgian civil servants is especially impressive when you compare the National Bank of Belgium's headcount with that of central banks which still have currencies to attend to. Belgium employs twice as many central bankers as Britain, he reports, and four times as many as Sweden. Belgian readers may complain at this point that their central bank still has various tasks to perform, including the collection of statistics and whatnot, printing banknotes and its role as a member of the Eurosystem.
The bank's website clearly recognises it may have an image problem, stressing at some length its tasks, which include: "operation of the Central Balance Sheet Office and the central credit offices, the State Cashier service and the management of the interbank payment systems."
In short, the bank's website concludes: "The National Bank has lost none of its usefulness since the Eurosystem was established." None of it?
more:http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2008/03/belgiums_unsackable_central_ba