Cypern: opklaret

Alphaville, førerhunden blandt FTs blogs, har nedsporet forklaringen på de cypriotiske bankers fald. Det viser sig, at de brugte de særlige treårige lån fra ECB til én procents rente til at spekulere i græske statsobligationer i stedet for at omlægge deres andre lån.

Back then (as with the three-year LTROs two years later) this was designed to shore up banks’ cash and help them refinance a mountain of their maturing debt. Which, let’s be clear, is what these liquidity ops were generally used for. Even when there were pretty idiotic calls at the time for the three-year LTROs to be used as giant carry trades in peripheral sovereign paper. This Thursday alone, Mario Draghi pointed to progress in banks repaying funds, “proving wrong all those who thought that huge risks were taken with the [3-year] LTROs”.

Yes well, talking of huge risk.

Endnu et bevis på, at det er bedre at give folk penge i stedet for banker, hvis man skal ud af en økonomisk depression.