Author: Karl Whelan

I have told myself to stay out of the Target 2 debate, partly because this pretty much sums it up and I’ll just end up repeating myself and partly because the brave Olaf Storbeck has taken this on himself so many times.

However, this article by Tornell and Westermann is worth bringing up because the appearance of two people who are not Hans Werner Sinn making Sinn-like claims might suggest there is a point here. In fact, this piece has even less to add (and more to subtract, if believed) to the stock of useful knowledge than Sinn’s various pieces. (Unfortunately, its points were repeated on the usually-excellent FT Alphaville.)

Tornell-Westermann (TW) repeat the fallacy that the Bundesbank has loaned money to the so-called GIPS central banks. Their new twist on this story is that “In order to fund these loans, the Bundesbank sold its holdings of German assets.”

They back this up with a table showing information from the Bundesbank balance sheet. A line labelled “Private securities owned by central bank” shows a large decline in recent years.

What does this line correspond to? Well, TW’s line for “Private securities owned by central bank” equals €224 billion in 2009 and €277 billion in 2008.

Let’s go consult the Bundesbank’s own description of its balance sheet for these years (page 148 of this file). It tells us that “Lending to euro-area credit institutions related to monetary policy operations denominated in euro” equalled €223.61 billion in 2009 and €277.425 billion in 2008. I’m going to guess that the resemblance between these figures and those reported by TW is not coincidental and that TW’s figures correspond to the same entries.

Is “Private securities owned by central bank” – as best I can see a terminology invented by TW – a more accurate description than the terminology used by the Bundesbank, which effectively means “loans”?

Well, no. These entries correspond to loans. They are securitised loans, specifically repurchase agreements, so the Bundesbank holds a security as collateral for the (usually short) maturity period of this loan. But the value of the loans are less the value of the corresponding securities (i.e. a haircut is applied to the collateral) so the asset on the Bundesbank’s balance sheet is the value of the loan, not the value of the asset. Also, the asset remains on the balance sheet of the borrowing bank because the bank regains the asset on repayment of the loan and thus the transaction does not correspond to the accounting requirements for “derecognition” of assets.

So, this item – lending by the Bundesbank to German banks – has declined in recent years, from €277.425 billion in 2008 to €37.6 billion in August 2011 (the latest figures I could find – page 111). The reasons for this are not too surprising. There has been enormous capital flight from the periphery into German banks which, as a consequence, have had far less need than previously to borrow funds from the Bundesbank for liquidity purposes.

Note also that Eurosystem policy in recent years has been to supply banks with a full allotment of funds requested in refinancing operations, so the Bundesbank has not made any conscious decision to reduce the amount of lending it has done.

If “the Bundesbank has done less lending because German banks have asked for a smaller amount of loans” sounds different from “the Bundesbank has had to sell off securities to fund loans to peripheral central banks” that’s because it is. The first statement is true and the second isn’t.

The rest of Tornell and Westermann’s article is not much better.

· The presentation of the Bundesbank’s “Other claims within the Eurosystem (net)” (i.e. the Target 2 credit) as some kind of enforced loan to the rest of the system rather than the accounting entry that reflects a transfer from the rest of the system to Germany mirrors Professor Sinn’s ability to make something that is good for Germany appear to be Germans getting ripped off.

· The idea that the Bundesbank is about to “run out of money” – “the Bundesbank will soon exhaust the stock of securities that it can sell to fund further loans to the Eurosystem” – is completely without basis in reality. Still, the stuff about the Bundesbank’s gold holdings and the German public not wanting to sell it will appeal to paranoid goldbugs everywhere.

· The material about Target claims being collateralised by, for example, Greek bonds sounds scary but, in reality, is just false.

· The less said about TARGET being “overwhelmed” because “the ECB has a relatively small capital base” the better.

The crazy thing is that the Euro area is undergoing a real crisis and there is a huge need for an informed public debate on potential solutions. We don’t need academics making up fake crises and stirring intra-European resentments based on a misunderstanding of central bank arcania.