ECB Cuts Off Operations With Some Greek Banks

FRANKFURT, May 16 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has stopped monetary policy operations with some Greek banks as they have not been successfully recapitalised, euro zone central bank sources said on Wednesday.

The ECB declined to comment.

The ECB only conducts its refinancing operations with solvent banks. With no access to ECB funds, the banks concerned must go to the Bank of Greece for emergency liquidity assistance (ELA).

It was unclear exactly how many banks were affected.

One person familiar with the matter said four Greek banks' capital was so depleted they were operating with negative equity capital. According to its own rules, the ECB cannot provide liquidity to banks in such a situation.

The ECB said earlier on Wednesday it continued to support Greek banks. (Reporting by Annika Breidthardt and Andreas Framke; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Noah Barkin)

Comments

[Bunny007]

09:31 AM on 05/17/2012

If you are going to PANIC, panic first---

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/banks-wall-street-europe-crisis_n_999204.html

Hard assets are starting to look really good.

[knotsofast]

01:39 AM on 05/17/2012

The Dems want to take the U.S. down the same road as Greece. This guy got his money from the Greeks though! They didn't have to borrow it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/vulture-funds-circle-as-greece-fears-grow-7758127.html

[Frog in a pot]

01:45 PM on 05/17/2012

We already are at Greek levels of debt.The only difference is we can print our own currency.
And republicans allowed it all.

Who said "Reagan PROVED deficts dont matter?"...........you voted for them TWICE.
And thats BEFORE they allowed the banks to defraud the world and the US.
TARP was bush.
Get a clue.

[knotsofast]

04:37 PM on 05/17/2012

They didn't when they were 300 BILLION a year...not 1.5 TRILLION a year for the last 5 years.

[Tahut]

01:48 PM on 05/17/2012

When the Greeks joined the EU they gave up the right to print money to keep from going insolvent as they had always done in the past. They should have had plans ready to implement when the economy began to sour that would have substituted for printing money to reduce the stress on the economy.

As far as I know, the US still has control over printing of money if the economy sours like in Greece. Our money will still have value but inflation will begin to eat away at it. Better to have inflation and worthless notes of no value.

[knotsofast]

04:35 PM on 05/17/2012

Just wait. The world will get another lesson on inflation as they go back to the old currency. Inflation is cruel.

[Anne Mccormick]

12:32 AM on 05/17/2012

the Republicans will tell you that what's happening in Greece is exactly why the United States must cut spending on "unnecessary" programs immediately. the trick will be to persuade them otherwise.

[Nathan Brittles]

12:25 AM on 05/17/2012

Are You Better Off Than You Were Five Trillion Dollars Ago?

Make it Six, well before the end of Obamas first [ and perhaps only], term.

[jerryvinter]

11:50 PM on 05/16/2012

The picture on the main page screams "end of Greece". Historical?

[Bedtime Bonzo]

10:50 PM on 05/16/2012

Don't worry, Obama is going to pump American taxpayer money into Europe.

President Obama is expected to press German Chancellor Angela Merkel to support a growth package to help bail out Europe at the G8 summit this weekend amid fears in the White House that the eurozone crisis could damage the president's re-election chances.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/16/g8-summit-obama-angela-merkel-eurozone

As we all know by now, the $timulus was so successful here. Now featuring $15T in debt.

[darksigns84]

11:02 PM on 05/16/2012

The fed has been giving our money to Europe for quite sometime now. They have been doing currency swapping as well, trading Taxpayer Dollars for Greek and other currencies.

But you are correct. Obama is corrupt just like most of our Congress and they love spending taxpayer money.

They figure if they continue to do the same things that don't work over and over again, that eventually it might work. But they are on a losing streak.

[romano70]

11:02 PM on 05/16/2012

I love it when repugs pull these obscene amounts of money out of their imagination and assume that they know more about Economy than nobel laureates even when they barely have a high school education. Just love to hear them talk about what the "nazi-communist" president is going to do now (never mind their imagined things never materialized and never mind that nazism is the extreme political right and communism is the extreme political left. This si the problem with homeschooling. And inbreeding.

[witz]

12:54 AM on 05/17/2012

amen.

[modelaford]

10:34 PM on 05/16/2012

Reminds me of people withdrawing money from US banks back in 1929 after stock market crash. Huge runs on bank withdrawals usually results in depression.
Looks like a depression is heading for them if this is not resolved.

And if people in the US thinks this does not impact them - think again. Our banks and wall street are linked in with Greece and what happens in Greece - does not stay in Greece. It will spread to other countries across the globe, including wall street and the banks here in the US.

This folks is really a serious thing for everyone in the world.
Withdrawing almost a billion or more of money in last few days - not a good sign at all.
Praying for something to get resolved on this. seriously. this is very serious.

[vrede]

10:50 PM on 05/16/2012

this did not start in Europe. the banks are already linked

[Arianwen Everett]

03:25 AM on 05/17/2012

Exactly. The Greeks have realized they loose either way. Austerity is just slow and painful bleeding of their resources to keep internation bankers from taking losses. Greece will go bankrupt, but bankrupcy gives them the chance to recover more quickly and takes into account their needs and values in how they go about to do it. What they have to worry about now is the international banksters deciding to make an example out of them by intentionally making their recovery harder than it has to be.

[Bunny007]

09:32 AM on 05/17/2012

US Banks could lose huge amts. of money----

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/banks-wall-street-europe-crisis_n_999204.html

[Pete Mojica]

10:12 PM on 05/16/2012

They been playing this crying game "the sky is falling in Greece" for years now. Fall already or shut the heck up and stop milking the fear mongering. Report it when it happens. News media so FULL of S. . .T!

[HCLiberal]

09:52 PM on 05/16/2012

Softening, Merkel Says She Is Open to Stimulus for Greece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18092653
-----------------

Too little, too late?

[VikingQuest]

10:01 PM on 05/16/2012

"Paralysed patients use thoughts to control robotic arm"

[Nathan Brittles]

12:34 AM on 05/17/2012

Perhaps. In bailing out Greece [again] there is certainty already voiced by others in the EU that they will not be able to Get Theirs. Banking institutions and even governments, will only be able to loan so much. As Obama quickly continues to pile up debt here, [and will demand a further raising of the debt ceiling that already suffers from stretch-marks], getting loans will continue to be a trickier deal as banks simply stop lending thus stalling economic growth . The impacts these will have on American institutions cannot in any way be minimized. Nor is Japanese-style deficit spending the answer, as it slid that once-booming nation into decades of decline as a result. It really can take but one ''some damned fool thing in the Balkans'' to touch off a worldwide crisis. The media can only read tea leaves until after the results of the G-8 meeting have been felt.

[happyone6470]

09:40 PM on 05/16/2012

Does anybody think the IMF will bail them out again ? If they do we need to withdraw from the IMF .

[CreepyThinMan]

09:15 PM on 05/16/2012

This was all planned by the Governments and their Banklster cronies. Run up debt, bring in austerity and then sell everything off to privatization for pennies on the dollar.

[vrede]

10:54 PM on 05/16/2012

your not the only one who has wondered this. slowly capitalism is squashing socialism. big business sends work to slave countries and what was 1st world countries are looking more and more like 3rd world. Only one kind of people are the winners here and it isn't labor.

[darksigns84]

11:16 PM on 05/16/2012

Very true. People tend to label these things as "conspiracy theory" or other things, but they are facts, just like our rights we are losing everyday and the war that was silently declared on us by our government.

The banks want to bring down the nations one by one under and place them under their control. Currently they are working on the US and getting rid of the Constitution, or what currently remains of it.

Soon the dollar is going to fall and hyperinflation will happen. The DHS just bought 450million rounds .40 caliber. They have enough ammo for 7 years on us citizens. Also, there are many FEMA concentration camps that are starting to get running as well as re-education camps for people who speak out against the government.

http://www.infowars.com/army-admits-re-education-camp-manual-not-intended-for-public-release/

Keep up the good work. People need to wake up to what is going on around here.

[vrede]

04:26 AM on 05/17/2012

You are so right. Now americas newest law from the wonderful congress is charging americans with terrorism and taking away their right to trial and freedom. this includes journalists and people speaking against the government. fortunatly there was one judge who remembered there is a first amendment.
getting more and more communist everyday and they cry socialism is the problem.

[wgpbp]

09:12 PM on 05/16/2012

Well come what may.

Big garden, 3 Angus steers, plenty chicken and eggs.

Freezer full of venison and a smoke house full of hams, shoulders and side meat.

Push come to shove - - - -let me know how it turns out.

I sit on the front porch in the evenings or down at the pond fishing.

Come on by the house.

[cdcfbw]

09:48 PM on 05/16/2012

Sounds wonderfull!!

[wanderingsalmon]

11:31 PM on 05/16/2012

You wont be so gracious when the starving hordes decide it's easier to steal your food than grow their own, which is one of the many reasons I'm into the forest garden or food forest concept. The vast majority of people would walk right past a mature food forest and not realize there was a plethora of edible and medicinal plants at their feet, they might nail some fruit from the trees, but they wouldn't know a jerusalem artichoke or a groundnut or a patch of comfrey from any other weed. To the untrained eye it looks like an overgrown patch of mayhem, to those in the know it's a supermarket and pharmacy.

[Randy Johns]

09:12 PM on 05/16/2012

possibly cut these banks off only because big business and big money had no investment in them?

[AndyB62]

09:11 PM on 05/16/2012

Let's see, Greece just elected a government partially controlled by neo-nazis, their debt is held by foriegn countries who are making demands on the Greek banks, the economy is as bad as it can get. Wasn't this the same atmosphere in Germany in the late 1930's?

[Nathan Brittles]

12:46 AM on 05/17/2012

No. The Neos are a tiny and isolated minority. It is the leftist socialists and the Progressives who made the biggest gains.[ along with their Greek Independant Party and the Communists]. The conservatives, who laready had a sizable pre-election bloc in their Parliament, have spurned the Nazis and the communists all at once and have drawn towards the independants and democratic socialists in angling for a bloc, while the leftists will not come to terms with the conservatives unless they bring on the Radicals, as also demanded by the Reds . There are thus no comparisons to Germany to be made worth mentioning. Their Nazis were brutally organized. This Greek mess is chaos realized.

[candysays]

07:25 PM on 05/17/2012

OMG, No they didn't.

They have elected members of parliament -a FEW of whom were fascist thugs- but no government has been formed with and no government will be controlled by any of those thugs. They get a few seats in the hall, but none in office.

Nevertheless, the analogy holds insofar as it is true that more of the people are moving from the middle to the flanks.

[Joseph Veverka]

08:39 PM on 05/16/2012

It may be an over simplification of the situation but part of Greeks problem stems from the fact that their natural resources stand at 3.3% of GDP. while tourism is over seventh present. Very lopsided numbers. Now a days many people are putting off vacations. Of course the debt structure is top heavy to say the least.