Political independence amounts to a ''necessary but not sufficient condition'' to operate the new bank, he said recently. Mr. Issing said. The Bundesbank and U.S. Federal Reserve know that a single misplaced utterance can send markets into wild gyrations. Yet the risk of a ''tribalization'' of views are real, especially under a ''one size fits all'' interest rate policy, economists said. Mr. Schmieding said.
Skeptics note that tolerance of central bank autonomy itself is a new phenomenon in Europe.
In December 1991, when European leaders signed the Maastricht treaty that founded the European Union, central banks in most of the signatory countries were more or less dependent on their governments. ''It is clear that the culture of stability is not as deeply ingrained in places like Italy and Spain and even France as it is in Germany,'' said Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, an Italian-born economist at Morgan Stanley. Not all agree. For a central bank, ''reputation has its roots in decisive and goal-oriented action. It is bound to an institution and cannot simply be bequeathed,'' according to the view last year of Germany's Council of Economic Advisers. Traders, who long used the rule of thumb ''never bet against the Bundesbank,'' will be ready to put its replacement to the test.