The bloc is now in its longest recession since the birth of the single currency, beating the post-Lehman Brothers slump in duration, though not in the depth of the downturn.

The survey already caused something of a stir in Germany earlier this week because it appeared to show that the typical Cypriot household was better off than the typical German one. (In 2010, anyway, and subject to a lot of caveats and nuance, summarised in the story.)

Today’s ECB monthly bulletin also picks over some of the data in the HFCS and highlights this ability to compare data with the US Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. One interesting tidbit it points out is quite how much wealth distribution differs between the US and (the euro-wielding corner of) Europe.

Yves Mersch. Getty Images

Yves Mersch, the former governor of the bank of Luxembourg, whose elevation to the European Central Bank’s six-person executive board became the subject of a row about the lack of female central bankers, has given his first interview since taking up the post on Monday.

The ECB normally publishes transcripts of these on its website but has not done so this time, presumably because the interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was conducted just before he formally took up post. So as a service to Money Supply readers, here are some of the highlights.

Mr Mersch attempted to pour cold water on speculation that a cut to the ECB’s main refinancing rate (currently 0.75 per cent) is imminent.

Now some clarity from Benoît Cœuré, the ECB executive board member who oversees market operations, who spells it out:

We’ve been very clear on the modalities of the OMTs. They are ready and we’re not going to provide any more details.

The theory is being tested right now by Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, as his controversial “outright monetary transactions” bond-buying programme is forced to sit on the benches until the prime candidate for help, Spain, applies to the EU’s bailout fund.

As a quick reminder, the Maradona theory refers to the 1986 World Cup quarter final between England and Argentina. Diego Maradona scored a celebrated goal with a run from near the halfway line in which he beat five England players by, er, running in a straight line.

Still not there: Yves Mersch

Yves Mersch’s long, slow ascent to a place on the six-member executive board of the European Central Bank has just hit another potentially serious roadblock.

The governor of the Bank of Luxembourg is male, like all his central bank peers in the eurozone, and the economic and monetary affairs committee of the European Parliament has decided it is time to draw a line in the sand.

In September, the committee, which has to approve his appointment, postponed his confirmation hearing because no women candidates had been considered for the job. This evening, the news from Brussels is that the committee will hold a formal hearing on October 22, but it will make a negative recommendation about his candidacy.

The reason for this remains the committee’s objection that no female candidate was offered for consideration. It is saying it will not make any judgment on Mr Mersch’s competence as a central banker.

BuBa’s monthly report, published on Monday, includes a whole chapter entitled: “The IMF in a changed global environment.” It becomes clear fairly quickly that eyebrows are being raised in Frankfurt at some elements of the IMF’s stance in the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, where the Fund has taken on its own lending and acted as a member of the “troika” of IMF, ECB and European Commission officials advising on bailouts.

“By taking on excessive risks, the IMF would gradually transform from a liquidity-providing mechanism into a lending institution,” the bank says on the first page of its 15-page discussion. “Such a transformation would neither accord with the legal and institutional provisions of the IMF agreement, nor with the fund’s financing mechanism or its risk control functions.”

The risk is not so much that a traveller will one day find “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” in a desert, but rather a vast and shiny glass-and-steel tower block near the river Main with no one in it. At least that might be the suspicion of those who think the euro may not last long enough to see the moving vans arrive from the centre of town in 2014, where the ECB now has its offices.

For here was an all-woman group of qualified observers discussing decisions made in an environment so male-dominated it might as well be one of London’s traditional gentlemen’s clubs in St James.  The ECB has no women on its executive board and none of the 17 heads of eurozone central banks that join the executive board on the bank’s rate-setting governing council is led by a woman. And the ECB is far from an exception — women are exceptionally rare in central banks the world over.

Economists love to portray themselves as iconoclasts who follow the evidence and act rationally. So why is central banking gender politics so 19th century?