For How LONG?
Until tomorrow?
Maybe next week?
douchbag politicians
"The motion states that the European Central Bank (ECB) will no longer need to buy bonds on the secondary markets"
This is from yesterday, junkies can not go cold turkey
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Euro zone to urge ECB to buy more bonds, Germany at odds By Julien Toyer
and Andreas RinkePosted 2011/10/25 at 9:54 am EDT
BRUSSELS/BERLIN, Oct. 25, 2011 (Reuters) — Euro zone leaders are set to call on the European Central Bank to go on buying bonds to support the Italian and Spanish debt markets, according to draft conclusions ahead of a summit Wednesday, but Germany said it opposed such a step.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks after receiving an award for Understanding and Tolerance from the Director of the Jewish Museum Werner Michael Blumenthal during a ceremony at the museum in Berlin October 24, 2011. REUTERS/Michael Gottschalk/Pool
According to a draft obtained by Reuters, the leaders will say in their conclusions: "We fully support the ECB in its actions to ensure price stability in the euro area, including its non-standard measures in the current exceptional financial market environment."
EU sources said "non-standard measures" referred to the ECB buying the bonds of distressed euro zone sovereigns in the secondary market, which it resumed in August to help prop up Italy and Spain.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted quickly in Berlin, telling reporters she did not want a declaration from politicians telling the ECB what do to. "This sentence, the way it is in the communique now, is not accepted by Germany," Merkel said.
"We are negotiating toward getting a statement from the ECB on what it wants to do."
The ECB has been buying Spanish and Italian bonds for more than two months in an effort to push down their debt yields and funding costs, with investors fearing that both countries could be headed the same way as Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all of which have received EU/IMF bailouts.
In all, the ECB has so far bought around 170 billion euros ($238 billion) of distressed euro zone debt, helping keep in check a widening yield spread between peripheral euro zone nations' bonds and benchmark German debt.
The bond-buying by the Frankfurt-based ECB has divided the bank's board and public opinion in Germany over whether it should stray from its central mandate of fighting inflation.
Merkel said her government was trying to get a statement from the ECB on its position on the draft conclusions.
"We want to have much clearer formulations on what the ECB wants itself and (we) will comment on that. We do not want there to be a misunderstanding that politicians expect something (specific) from the ECB," Merkel said.
She said too much was being read into the draft conclusions. "The sentence does not contain the statement that purchases on the secondary market are possible. It just says that non-standard measures will be continued," she said.
Many economists say the only way for the 17-nation euro zone to protect itself from further market pressure and win back confidence is to place the ECB and its unlimited liquidity at the center of Europe's rescue of heavily indebted sovereigns.
Despite French insistence for a central ECB role, Germany and the European Commission say it would breach EU law.
Given that impasse, euro zone leaders are now expected on Wednesday to agree to multiply the power of the bloc's rescue fund and partially insure bonds against default, without the ECB's involvement in that particular process.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Julien Toyer in Brussels; Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by John Stonestreet) |
