Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Greece Continues to Run Up Liabilities at the ECB


The ECB is not openly discussing this, but these ELA euros are coming from TARGET2, further raising GoB's liability to the rest of the Eurosystem. Furthermore the collateral requirements for ELA are far less stringent than the ECB's standard financing facilities such as MRO and LTRO. In case of a possible re-denomination, the ability to recover ELA collateral with any material value will be quite minimal.
Read it at Sober Look
Greek ELA growth poses increasing risks for the Eurosystem
By Walter Kurtz

The risks and size of potential ECB losses continues to grow as time passes and Greece remains part of the EMU (part of the Greek strategy?). Although the ECB cannot run out of Euros (go bankrupt), incurring actual losses blurs the line between monetary and fiscal policy. This result, which seems increasingly probable, will likely hinder support for further expansions of the ECB’s balance sheet.   

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