How the ECB’s fig leaf has completely withered away

The Times
"In effect, therefore, the ECB has been lending money by the shed-load to governments, with commercial banks acting merely as a fig leaf for what would otherwise be seen as a blatant monetisation of the most insolvent European countries’ public debt. In normal circumstances, this fig leaf might at least have theoretically protected the virginal purity of the ECB by interposing the commercial banks’ own balance sheets between the government borrowers and the ECB. ....and the ECB’s balance sheet is a joke, since the Greek, Irish and Spanish banks queuing up for ECB funding are near-insolvent and would certainly be insolvent were it not for the limitless supply of money they are getting, in exchange for dubious collateral, from the ECB itself. In short, the commercial bank intermediaries interposed between the ECB printing presses and European governments’ borrowings should not even be described as a fig leaf — more like the climactic G-string in the world’s most expensive strip show."