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Mario Draghi Is Playing With Fire

Remember asset-backed securities and the 2008 global financial crash? Desperate to jumpstart Europe's economy, the European Central Bank chief is making them presentable again.

Super Mario accelerates
Super Mario accelerates
Ulrich Schäfer

-OpEd-

MUNICHAn anti-lock braking system (ABS) is named such because it is supposed to prevent the wheels of a car from locking up when braking, thus avoiding skidding. The ABS is meant to avoid the worst: crashes, destroyed cars, and of course, injury and death.

But the three letters ABS also stand for another — very dubious — practice not invented by wise automotive engineers but instead by smart-aleck investment bankers. Asset-backed securities were among the credit packages for banks and funds created seven or eight years ago that made their way around the globe. They ended up contributing to the crash of the financial markets: Nobody actually knew who owed whom — and how much — and what risks they had incurred.

And now the European Central Bank (ECB), of all institutions, wants to make these dubious securities presentable again. ECB President Mario Draghi has announced that the central bank will be buying up these and other securities to the tune of up to half a billion euros — that's 500,000,000,000 euros.

What the ECB hopes to achieve by this is to create the necessary space for banks to extend new credit. This is mainly meant to help European crisis states so that their banks can extend more credit to small- and medium-sized businesses.

It's not that it's unusual for a central bank to hold securities. When commercial banks want to borrow from the ECB, they often use top-rated securities as collateral. But it is something else entirely for the central bank to accept securities of questionable quality, especially because it puts the financial institution into a market that a serious central bank has no business being anywhere near, and one that has already led to full-blown global crisis.

Mario Draghi has been saying for months that the ECB would carefully monitor which asset-backed securities it buys. And it is true that not every credit package on the financial markets is a gamble. And yet the ECB is playing with fire.

The move also demonstrates just how badly off the central bank is right now, as nothing it has done so far to combat the crisis has actually helped. It can't even lower base interest rates anymore. The reduction from 0.15% to 0.05% is merely symbolic.

Yes, necessity is the mother of invention, but no, not all inventions make sense. And some of them, like Mario Draghi's ABS emergency brake, are downright dangerous.

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Geopolitics

"No F**king Future!" FSB Verifies Leaked Audio Of Putin Pals Bashing War

What does Russia's ruling class really think of Putin? A leaked audio recording of Russian producer Iosif Prigozhin and Russian billionaire ex-senator Farhad Akhmedov criticizing Putin has been verified by Russian intel service FSB, offering a peak into the anger toward the Kremlin's war.

Photo of Music producer Iosif Prigozhin

Music producer Iosif Prigozhin attending a party after a concert by opera stars ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, at the GUM Department Store.

Roman Anin

A leaked recording in which influential Russians close to President Vladimir Putin trash the leader and his handling of the war in Ukraine has been confirmed as authentic. This rare window into the opaque world of Russian oligarchs confirms the suspicion that the country's wealthy and powerful have grave concerns about the Kremlin

In the expletive-laden conversation, successful Russian music producer Iosif Prigozhin and billionaire and former Senator Farhad Akhmedov, strong public supporters of the war, can be heard describing Russian leaders as "f**king criminals" who have "f**ked up everything."

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The recording which first appeared on social media on March 7, but it wasn't until Sunday when a high-level source in the Russian intelligence services had confirmed to independent Russian media Vazhnyye Istorii (Important Stories) that that the recording was real.

"The recording of the conversation between Prigozhin and Akhmedov is authentic. The FSB leadership held a meeting the other day and ordered their subordinates to take action,” commented a FSB source.

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