Is There Room for Entrepreneurs Among Eurocrats?

Four years ago, I listened to Philipp Hildebrand, then deputy chairman of the Swiss central bank, deliver a policy speech at a London conference. He was not your usual brand of bureaucratic Swiss gnome: the debonair Hildebrand spoke with memorable passion, punch and humour about the dire shortage of capital at western banks (long before it was fashionable to do so).

Now Hildebrand has become memorable again â?? but for entirely dismal reasons. On Monday, he resigned as chairman of the Swiss National Bank, over a scandal about his familyâ??s currency dealings. Though the full facts of the story are unclear, emails suggest that Hildebrand knew that his wife planned to make large-scale dollar trades just before SNB intervention â?? an episode that (at best) implies carelessness and misjudgment.