Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Quote of the Day: Eurobonds and the Euro

News flash: eurobonds have already been issued. They are called euros. ECB reserves are just particularly liquid floating-rate debt. The ECB issues reserves in return for sovereign debt and lends reserves to banks who load up on sovereign debt. This action is functionally the same as issuing Eurobonds to buy sovereign debts. What happens of the ECB's holdings of sovereign debt or its bank loans turn out to be worthless? If the ECB needs to be "recapitalized," it has the explicit right to call up the member states and demand funds, which means the member states have to kick in tax revenues. This is exactly a eurobond. For better, or, likely, worse.

That’s from University of Chicago Professor John H. Cochrane.

This only shows how governments and their allies resort to magical formulations to desperately prop up an unsustainable system.

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