TRICHET SAYS ECB BOND PURCHASES ARE `ONGOING PROGRAM’

>   
>   (email exchange)
>   
>    On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 7:09 AM, Dave wrote:
>   
>   In response to German govt comments earlier
>   
>   Also ECB is in buying small amounts of Greece and Portugal in today’s
>   weak market
>   

They probably only see two choices-

Keep muddling through by doing what they are doing.

Or stop doing it, which means it all quickly grinds to a halt, most likely with none of the member nations being able to fund themselves.

At least for now, there doesn’t seem to be any political progress towards any other institutional structure.

Meanwhile, the ECB’s highly deflationary terms and conditions exacted in exchange for the funding (aka austerity measures) are slowly working to cut aggregate demand in reverse the current modest expansion.