[Skybird]

The ECB cannot do without it and already tries to extinguish fires again by spilling even more gasoline into the fires and distorting markets. For that it uses a new "tool" (as if these fraudulent schemes they implenment all the time were "tools"...) it has "created" just last month. Also, bonds which has reached the end of their runnig time now no longer gets paid back, but mandatorily gets re"invested" (obviously they have no clue what the term "investment" actually describes) into new bonds again with even more disadvantageous conditions for the original lender.

Fraud and betrayal, plunder, theft and lies. Thats what it is about, nothing else.

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(Bloomberg) The European Central Bank appears to have made billions of dollars of bond purchases to protect Italy and other southern euro members from undesirable market developments (hear, hear, Skybird) since activating its first line of defense against speculation a month ago.

Data released Tuesday indicate a significant use of funds freed up by maturing bonds in the pandemic program portfolio. This suggests that the tool has been deployed, which the central bank has earmarked as a first response to market turmoil.

The statistics, which are available only on a two-month basis, show that net holdings of German, French, and Dutch bonds fell by 18.9 billion euros through July. Net purchases of bonds from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece totaled 17.3 billion euros.

The figures are the first hard data to show the ECB's intervention in bond markets after a jump in bond yields in June forced President Christine Lagarde to call an emergency meeting at which officials agreed on the need for a response.

"It appears that the ECB has already activated its first line of defense," said Christoph Rieger, head of rates at Commerzbank AG. "This is by far the biggest reduction in German holdings since the ECB started quantitative easing, and more than we expected." As a first step, council members agreed to flexibly reinvest the repayments due on their €1.66 trillion asset purchase program.

To organize the bond purchases, they divided the euro area into three categories: Donors, including Germany, France and the Netherlands; Recipients, consisting of Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal; and so-called Neutrals.

Lagarde described this flexibility as the ECB's first line of defense against market volatility that threatens the transmission of monetary policy. In addition, a newly created debt purchase tool is ready in the background should stronger intervention become necessary.

Italy has been in investors' focus since Prime Minister Mario Draghi's government fell last month and new elections were put on the agenda for late September.
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THIS IS FINANCIAL SOCIALISM IN ITS PUREST FORM. Not just the ammount of currency tokens, but even terms of conditions and interests as a tool to counter-balance bigger risks for lenders to leasers, are now being directly manipulated. From here on it will not be much longer anymore until the state begins to dicate prices and openly confess to be a state-micromanaged planned economy.

The - even not so long - journey of the ECB to the dark side of the force is completed. Long live the continental GDR.