27/12/18: Mr. Draghi's Santa: Ending QE, Frankfurt Style

It's Christmas time, and - Merry / Happy Christmas to all reading the blog - Mr. Draghi is intent on delivering a handful of new presents for the kids. Ho-Ho-Ho... folks:

The ECB balancesheet has just hit a new high of 42% of Eurozone GDP, up from 39.7% at the end of 3Q 2018. Although the ECB has announced its termination of new purchases of assets under the QE, starting in January 2019, the bank has continued buying assets in December, and it will continue replacing maturing debt it holds into some years to come.

Despite the decline in the Euro value, expressed in dollar terms, ECB's balancesheet is the largest of the G3 Central Banks, ahead of both the Fed and the BOJ.

Ho-Ho-Ho... folks. The party is still going on, although the guests are too drunk to walk. Meanwhile, global liquidity has been stagnant on-trend since the start of 2015.

And now the white powder of debt is no longer sufficient to prop up the punters off the dance floor:

Ho-Ho-Ho... folks.

28/10/17: Supplies of Monetary Methadone: ECB's Recalibration

My take on ECB's latest policy announcements for the Sunday Business Post: https://www.businesspost.ie/opinion/supplies-monetary-methadone-will-continue-401179.

17/10/17: ECB Boldly Goes Where It Was Going Before

'News' have become quite volatile to the upside these days... you hit a "Publish" button on one blog post dealing with QE (http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2017/10/171017-welcome-to-keynesian-monetarist.html) and another stream of numbers rushes in to fill the void left behind by the completed post...

With a h/t to Holger Zschaepitz @Schuldensuehner:

In summary terms:

• ECB (world's largest holder of Government junk err... debt... err assets...) has ramped up its QE purchases by EUR34 billion, reaching the new historical high of EUR4.371 trillion. 
• Currently, ECB asset holdings amount to 40.5 percent of the euro area GDP.

Of course, much of this 'purchasing' goes to fund fiscally insolvent 'austerity' implementing Governments of Europe (with exception of Greece). Courtesy of the above blue mountain, majority of European Governments today can avail of the negative yielding money from 'the markets'.