In the same way as a pickup in confidence can foreshadow a pickup in the economy, Weber's comments about the direction of ECB policy this year have tended to be borne out by events.

The ECB's broad hint on Nov. 5 that it will drop its super-long, one-year loans to euro zone banks next year follows a similar suggestion by Weber a week earlier.

And earlier this year, the 52-year-old publicly argued (and succeeded) for the ECB not to cut its main interest rate below zero, or follow other central banks in adopting a massive asset-buying programme.

Some economists wonder whether Weber -- seen along with Italy's Mario Draghi as an heir apparent to  ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet in 2011-- just dares to say publicly what others are already thinking, showing little regard for the unwritten rules that make Trichet the official barometer of ECB opinion.

But others say Weber's record this year shows he is successful at convincing others to follow his lead. A former academic, he can talk eloquently about the nitty-gritty of economic analysis and as the representative of the euro zone's biggest economy and banking sector, his opinion carries weight. 

"When Weber speaks, the market does tend to listen," says Societe Generale economist James Nixon, a former ECB staffer.

Central bankers not only earn much less than their high-flying private sector counterparts, but over the last year have spent almost every second weekend in high-level, save-the-world meetings aimed at clearing up the mess created by Wall St and City banks.     

European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet (who earns a mere 350,000 euros a year ) confessed to a group of student journalists that he spends almost every weekend working.

"My week often consists of seven working days, because we always have international meetings during the weekends," he was quoted as saying by Germany's Frankfurter Neue Presse. 

Trichet spent last weekend, for example, at the G20 meeting in London followed by a meeting of central bankers and regulators in Basel to thrash out a new framework for bank regulation.

One of the proposals: supervisors should make sure banks "limit excessive dividend payments, share buybacks and compensation."

New rules show that the size of a country's economy, the health of its banking sector and the spelling of its name will all influence how often a governor from one of the euro zone's national central banks gets to vote on setting ECB interest rates and other crucial policy decisions.

This could make the difference between a governor from a similar-sized economy being sidelined for as little as six months in a three-year period or as many as nine.

The system, set to kick in after three more countries adopt the euro, involves up to four groups of central bankers sharing differing numbers of votes. Votes will rotate every month, compared to the 12-month rotation seen at the U.S. Fed, and the complexity of the rules is mind-boggling.

 "The Governing Council has decided that the number of governors gaining voting rights at the start of each month will be equal to the difference between the number of governors allocated to the group and the number of voting rights assigned to it, minus two," the ECB said in its explanation of how it had decided on the rotation rate.

Coloured charts handily included with the announcement make the process somewhat easier to follow for the mathematically-challenged.

Currently there are 16 countries in the euro zone, and the new system is not set to kick in until membership hits 19. So given euro scepticism and budget woes in eastern Europe, policymakers are likely to have five more years to do the math before the test comes.

But the European Central Bank at least is now finding comfort in the fruits of its injection of close to half a trillion euros in 12-month funds last week, which has pushed money market interest rates to new record lows. 

"We are very happy, we see clearly that we decreased the risk premia," ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Thursday, after the ECB kept its benchmark rate on hold at 1 percent.

Still, the ECB's generosity in filling bank coffers with cheap cash could paradoxically help financial institutions defer the day of reckoning when they will have to write down bad loans and toxic assets on their books, and adjust their balance sheets. Flush with ECB cash, banks could be encouraged to think they can hang on to past investment mistakes, rather than writing them down now. 

The Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements, a forum for the world's central banks, says this painful process is a prerequisite for financial and economic recovery, and the International Monetary Fund  says the euro zone is lagging the United States in writedowns.

Maybe the ECB is not helping.

More than a thousand banks rushed to take up the ECB's limited-time-only offer of unlimited funds for one year at a fixed interest rate, and will receive a total of 442 billion euros, or $613 billion -- the most the ECB has ever lent out in a single operation. 

"We are drowning in money," a trader at one euro-zone bank said. Goldman Sachs estimated the funds equate to 1,300 euros per man, woman and child in the 16-nation region. 

The central bank is hoping banks will lend the funds on to those men, women and children, as well as other banks and businesses, to bring down the cost of money, encourage spending and shake the region out of a persistent recession.  Money market rates have already fallen to record lows as the ECB has slashed its interest rates, but longer-term liquidity is still scant.

The ECB's efforts will come to nothing if banks sit on the cash instead of lending it on, or fail to spark consumer demand for credit - so the ECB is betting that spend, spend, spend will light the way out of the downturn.

But euro zone residents are actually enjoying more favourable credit conditions than the ECB's "official" rate, the main refinancing rate, would suggest. 

 The Commerzbank branch opposite the ECB's Frankfurt headquarters is offering mortages at a five-year fixed rate of just over 3.5 percent,  two percentage points cheaper than the average cost just a few months ago.  This is partly because the ECB, in addition to cutting rates, has flooded money markets with liquidity, meaning banks can borrow money amongst themselves more cheaply than the official benchmark rate.

  Economists I've spoken to in the last few months have dubbed this a de facto zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP by stealth.

Average overnight interest rates or EONIA, which would normally track the main refi rate, have fallen steadily in the last few months arnd are down to below 0.9 percent, while Euribor three-month market rates are around 1.6 percent.

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Even ECB policymakers such as arch-hawk Axel Weber say that the ECB's overnight deposit rate, which is set one percentage point lower than the refi rate at 0.5 percent, has taken over the role as the floor for money markets, while the refi rate is acting as a ceiling.

One more 0.50 percentage point rate cut could take this rate down to zero, putting money market rates on a par with those in other regions while still allowing the ECB to keep to the moral high ground and argue that it is keeping up its guard against future asset price bubbles and inflationary pressures.

"If they go to 1 percent for the refi and put the deposit rate at zero, it means we would have an overnight money market rate at 0.2-0.3 percent, which would be for all intents and purposes a zero monetary policy," Bank of America Merril Lynch economist Gilles Moec said.

That's the logical conclusion of comments in recent weeks made by ECB policymakers including Italy's Mario Draghi and Germany's Axel Weber, who are watching inflation-adjusted borrowing costs closely to gauge the impact of cuts in official interest rates on the real economy.

One key factor in the euro zone's economic recovery will be the real cost of borrowing, the interest rate paid on credit after adjusting for inflation, or any loss of purchasing power.

Although there is a long academic debate about how to calculate this, several policymakers have done a simple equation of taking annual inflation (1.1 percent in January) away from the current benchmark interest rate (2.0 percent) to arrive at an estimate of the real cost of borrowing of just under 1 percent.

"In the euro area the real short-term rate is now below 1 per cent; if official rates had not been cut, it would have risen considerably because of the fall in inflation," Draghi said in a speech in Milan on Feb. 21. "The Governing Council is keeping a close watch on the real cost of money."

The catch to this argument is that euro zone inflation is expected to fall to zero or lower in the middle of the year, which will push real borrowing costs up unless the ECB slashes official rates by an equivalent amount. If it keeps its refi rate at 2.0 percent, the real rate would also be 2 percent -- or double the level it is now.

Economists fully expect the ECB to cut rates to 1.0 percent by the middle of the year, given the dismal outlook for growth as well as very low inflation. But they warn that the real rates argument could backfire on the ECB, which is already under fire for not having cut interest rates as aggressively as its peers in other countries, given inflation is expected to rise again in the second half of the year.

"Does that mean they would follow through by raising rates to compensate? That's why I think they should be very cautious in using this argument," said Deutsche Bank economist Mark Wall.

Despite European high street stores offering up to 90 percent off, rattled Euro consumers have reacted to the financial crisis by slamming the brakes on spending.

It is not exactly an irrational response. Jobs are being slashed at an eye-watering rate and savvy shoppers know that, as stores become ever more desperate, there is a good chance the
must-have jeans, gadget or new car they have been eyeing may be even cheaper in a few weeks.

So Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, decided to take it upon himself at the latest ECB news conference to try a bit of French sales patter after the bank kept interest rates at 2 percent but signalled further cutting was on the way.

"Households are saving more than we would suggest, especially in a number of countries where savings are particularly high," he said. Rough translation - stop hoarding your money and go to the shops and spend some money so we can get the economy going again.

The evidence is pretty clear cut. Official data showed that Euro zone household savings rose to 14.4 percent in the third quarter of last year, the highest in four years.

It is what is known in economists jargon as the 'paradox of thrift' a term coined by Britain economist John Maynard Keynes to explain the fact that people saving more in bad terms only adds to the problem by further sapping demand.