Target Loans, Current Account Balances and Capital Flows: The ECB’s Rescue Facility

The European Monetary Union is stuck in a severe balance of payments crisis. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain in particular have suffered from balance of payment deficits whose accumulated value, as measured by the Target balances in the national central banks’ balance sheets, was 314 billion euros in March 2011. The national central banks of these countries covered the deficits by creating and lending out additional central bank money that flowed to the euro core countries, Germany in particular, and crowded out the central bank money resulting from local refinancing operations. Thus the ECB forced a public capital flow from the core countries to the peripheral countries that partly compensated for the now reluctant private capital flows.currency union, balance of payments, bailout, payment system.