Germany: ‘Got Gold?’ – Draghi: ‘Try Some Bananas’
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
January 23, 2015
The ECB is finally beginning to perform miracles. The money-printing orgy has arrived. ECB President Mario Draghi had promised it since the steamy debt-crisis days of the summer of 2012. He’d do “whatever it takes,” he’d said. And Eurozone assets began soaring from that moment on.
Not because he’d single-handedly keep the Eurozone duct-taped together, but because he’d start printing money – at any moment, really. Simply the idea of it had the markets salivating at the mouth, and they – along with the IMF, the French government, numerous other over-indebted governments, hedge funds, etc. – had been clamoring for it ever since. He’d monetize government deficits and debts, no matter what worrywarts in Germany might be saying.
That’s how Draghi’s “whatever it takes” had been interpreted. A promise to inflate asset prices into the absurdosphere. For two-and-a-half years, it had been dangled in front of everyone’s nose as inducement to buy, buy, buy.
Over those two-and-a-half years, his hedge-fund buddies and Eurozone banks made out like bandits from his promise, buying sovereign bonds of Spain, Italy, and even Greece, and watch them defy gravity. The banks could even do so with the money the ECB was shoving down their throats to do just this sort of thing.
Now the pre-orgy is over, and the actual €60-billion-a-month money-printing orgy has started. It will amount to over €1 trillion. Or a lot more, sort of like the Fed’s QE Infinity – that’s how hype mongers are already reading the various statements. It will hopefully enrich Draghi’s hedge fund buddies and financial elite; “hopefully” because that’s the only thing QE might at best accomplish. One thing is already certain: it won’t do anything for the real economy.
The euro plunged to $1.136, the lowest in over a decade.
As I wrote a week ago in my article, Without QE, “Eurozone Financial Markets Would Collapse”, the ECB already imposes negative deposit rates on Eurozone banks to flog savers until their mood improves. Excess liquidity is sloshing audibly through the system. Yields are getting close to zero even for bonds with longer maturities. Since 2011, the Eurozone’s current-account surpluses with the rest of the world have risen sharply, even while the euro was very strong. The last thing the Eurozone economy needs? Even more negative yields and an even weaker euro.
The Rest…HERE
