Gentlemen, start your audits

THE ink on the agreements that will hand supervision of the euro area’s biggest banks to the European Central Bank (ECB) is barely dry. Yet the ECB is already enmeshed in squabbles with national banking supervisors over the extent of its powers and the rigour with which it will undertake its first big task, a warts-and-all review of the balance-sheets of the banks it will take charge of in a year’s time.