A program adopted by the Governing Council in September 2012 to buy up government bonds with a maturity of one to three years issued by non-competitive EMU members. This measure replaced the Securities Markets Programme (SMP), which had been in place until then, and met with fierce criticism, especially in Germany. This is because the lack of competitiveness of some EMU members is not a development to be tackled by monetary policy, but the direct consequence of nationally responsible economic and financial policies. If this increases the risks in one’s own country, and if this inevitably leads to higher interest rates for companies, then changing this state of affairs is not a matter for the ECB. Nor is the risk of a country leaving EMU a justification for ECB intervention. After all, whether a state remains in EMU or not is the decision of the sovereign state alone; and the ECB is in no way entitled to issue a guarantee for the current composition of EMU. – Because the ECB’s OMT program also has implications for German fiscal policy – because it is highly likely (with a high degree of probability) that the ECB will be left sitting on the government bonds it has bought because the issuing countries on the southern front are unable or unwilling to redeem them, and the losses will then have to be borne to a large extent by the German Bundesbank – plaintiffs had appealed to the German Federal Constitutional Court in June 2013. Private actions brought by 5,216 individuals before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg against the OMT program were dismissed. The court ruled in strictly legal terms that actions against fundamental decisions of the ECB were not admissible as long as no personal concern of the plaintiffs could be proven. – If it is argued that the ECB buys government bonds only on the secondary market, it should be noted that the term “secondary market” does not have any temporal definition. A bank can, for example, purchase government bonds as a primary buyer (first buyer) and resell these securities to the central bank within one second in an extreme case. – See fear, perverse, presumption, central banking, buyouts, central banking, expiration, bailout, balance sheet adjustment, democracy deficit, European Monetary Union, fundamental error, ECB collateral, ECB sin, Italian method, rescue, risk premium, shadow state, security discount, overgovernment, redistribution, central bank-induced, asset levy, competitiveness, zombie bank. – Cf. ECB Annual Report 2012, p. 89 (on the program), ECB Monthly Bulletin May 2014, p. 87 ff. (effects of ECB purchase programs; overviews; references).
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University Professor Dr. Gerhard Merk, Dipl.rer.pol., Dipl.rer.oec.
Professor Dr. Eckehard Krah, Dipl.rer.pol.
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