Germany's central bank is no place for a renegade

German central bankers are widely seen as a staid bunch. But that does not seem to apply to Thilo Sarrazin, a Bundesbank board member who has stirred controversy with utterances about race and immigration.
Mr Sarrazin, a former finance minister from the city-state of Berlin, carries on his bristly moustache an air of perpetual petulance. In a nomination opposed by the Bundesbank, he joined in May 2009 under a bizarre legal stipulation that allows Germany's federal states to choose the central bank's senior officials on the basis of political utility rather than competence.

By David Marsh