Picture the scene. Early morning chez Duisenberg. Mrs Wim (a great leap of creative licence here as I don't know whether there is a current incumbent) is talking to her husband. "Eat your ham and cheese. Don't forget to pick up the dry cleaning later. And get a hair cut today, for goodness sake, that fluffy white look is very ageing."
To which, naturally, Mr Duisenberg responds by lifting his head, peering at her over the top of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Central Banking and uttering those immortal words: "I hear but I don't listen".
Cue a trip to the marriage counsellor for Mrs Duisenberg, only to be told by her therapist that not listening is the main reason for marriage breakdowns and if she (the therapist) had a guilder (or a euro) for every time a woman walked through the doors and told her that her husband never listened she'd be a wealthy ex-therapist by now.
Not listening is not a good idea. Listening, whether you're a husband, wife, taoiseach or plain vanilla central banker is important. You don't have to act on the advice you've listened to - and many of those listed above frequently don't - but not listening at all is a cardinal sin.
Of course, Mr Duisenberg was undoubtedly trying to be witty. But he's not paid to be witty. He is paid to implement the policies of the European Central Bank (ECB). The main policy is keeping inflation low. If the world economy does eventually tumble into recession, his job will have been done for him. But European economies may have been destroyed in the meantime.
Oh, I know that central banks are supposed to be independent. I agree with the concept - the only thing worse than having an independent ECB is the idea of an ECB that is controlled by a European politician. But is Mr Duisenberg the only person in the world who doesn't think that there could be serious economic effects for Europe from the slowdown in the US?
Just because we haven't fallen into recession yet doesn't mean that the possibility isn't there. And surely Mr Duisenberg's job is to be ahead of the game, not running late onto the pitch and trying to find the ball?
Maintaining the value of the currency is another chapter in the Complete Idiot's Guide to Central Banking. In sticking so rigidly to inflation criteria, the ECB has clearly abandoned any attempt to maintain the euro's value. I can't help feeling that Wim sits in his office and looks at the Reuters screens and thinks that today is the day he gets yet another one over on the boys and girls in the markets who are desperately pinning their hopes on a rate cut and a turnaround in the euro's fortunes. Does he see it as a game where City bonuses will be wiped out this year because he's sure as hell not going to help traders by giving them what they want?
Maybe they shouldn't get what they want. After all, the traders and the deal-makers and the investment bankers were the ones who acted like children in a sweet shop when it came to bidding up the prices of equities to unsustainable stratospheric levels. Federal Reserve chairman Mr Alan Greenspan wasn't able to bring them to heel. Does Mr Duisenberg think that he can?
Just because, from time to time, the market does stupid things doesn't mean that everybody is, in fact, stupid. Analysts are right to worry about a slowdown, right to be concerned about recession and right to warn investors of a pretty rocky road ahead. And hearing but not listening isn't going to make things any easier.
Mind you, how many of us want to listen to unpalatable truths? The high-tech sector has been facing the fact that many of its companies and products are unwanted and unviable these days.
I read an interesting article by Karlin Lillington in last Saturday's Irish Times in which she berates the business community and the media for its schadenfreude regarding the demise of so many in the dotcom industry. Her view, and it's an entirely reasonable one, is that the closure of any company should be a cause for concern and that many of the technology companies that have failed or that will fail were not poorly managed but were victims of the drive for size and the demands of the market. The hype that surrounded the flotation of so many of these companies - generated by both the companies themselves and a media looking for sexy business stories - was such that most of us were happy to see a splash of cold water hit people who had become overnight millionaires simply by registering a dotcom name and signing up a celebrity to endorse whatever product was being sold. But it's certainly true that companies with good business plans were stretched by the demands that the hype placed upon them - companies that should have taken years to grow and develop were being forced into unacceptably fast expansion. It's hardly surprising that they, too, have fallen by the wayside.
In the technology boom-and-bust, we were told that we wanted and needed every innovation that came our way. Things had already started to slide before I knew that the madness had completely taken over - in a magazine a while ago I saw an ad for something called a Qoder, which was touted as the latest US must have shopping accessory. The Qoder fits on a keyring and is a scanning device that you pass over the barcode of anything that takes your fancy in a shop.
When you get home you load the device onto your computer, which will then access the Net to deliver you information on whatever the product was. It will send a photo, description, price and availability through on-line and conventional retailers.
I read all this will a growing sense of disbelief. To get any of this information, in real time, all you had to do was to look at the item in the shop, pick it up and check the price. And then, if you liked it, you could buy it. No hanging around. No waiting for ages for a not-very-good picture to download. No wondering when it would be delivered.
Sometimes I think it isn't only the ECB and Mr Duisenberg who are out of touch with reality!
