Check Out The Remarkable Signature One Of The World's Most Powerful Bankers Used When Pushing Countries Around...

One of the news items floating around the global finance industry this morning is a letter the former head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, wrote to the finance minister of Ireland during the financial crisis.

In the letter, which you can read here, Trichet made clear that if Ireland wanted a bailout, it was going to have to publicly humiliate itself by asking for one.

The content of the letter is interesting, for the reasons BI's Tomas Hirst explains here, but the Wall Street Journal's Katie Martin noted something else that was startling about it:

Trichet's signature.

If you're going to throw your weight around and make giant companies and countries tremble and kiss your ring, you might as well do it in style.

And Mr. Trichet certainly does:

As Katie Martin observed, with only a bit of added notation, the signature can be transformed into the symbol it was: