Fazi, Thomas, (2015), “A Few Clarifications About Greece And ELA”, Social Europe Journal, 8 Ιουλίου
A good part of the media (most notably in Germany) is framing the ECB’s emergency liquidity operations in Greece as ‘the ECB extending credits to Greek banks’. This is a huge misrepresentation of reality. The ECB is actually doing little more than what all central banks do (and, moreover, what it is legally bound to do by its own statute): provide liquidity (‘reserves’) to the banks of Member States and ‘promote the smooth operation of payment systems’ (Article 3.1 of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks). The only difference is that – contrary to ‘normal’ liquidity – the ELA is a much more expensive form of liquidity for the banks. Moreover, ELA liquidity isn’t extended directly by the ECB but by the national central banks (in this case the Bank of Greece), which – since national central banks can’t ‘print’ money in the eurozone – in turn ‘borrows’ the money from the ECB through the infamous – in Germany at least – TARGET2 system.
Σχετικές Αναρτήσεις
- Gros, Daniel, Alcidi, Cinzia, (2015), “The Greek economy is unlikely to benefit from further devaluation”, Ceps publications, 3 Ιουλίου
- Gilbert, Mark, (2015), “Debt Relief Should Be Greece’s Parting Gift”, Bloomberg View, 7 Ιουλίου