ECB QE Will Not Solve Greece Liquidity

January 21, 2015 Share Print 0

Any European Central Bank quantitative easing program would help Greece’s economy but would not be enough to solve its liquidity problems, Greek Finance Minister Gikas Hardouvelis said on Tuesday.

“A quantitative easing program alone is not enough to solve the Greek economy’s liquidity problems,” Hardouvelis said in an economic conference. “But it is one more tool of monetary policy implementation, which boosts liquidity and demand in goods and services.”

The ECB is widely expected to announce a new scheme to print money to buy euro zone government bonds, known as quantitative easing or QE, possibly this week, to combat the threat of deflation and get the euro zone economy back on a steady footing.

If such a scheme amounted to 550 billion euros, Greece would benefit from 15.9 billion euros in purchases of its government paper, Hardouvelis said in prepared remarks. He added that this should not be reduced based on factors such as the country’s sovereign credit rating.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.