There is much call these days for the ECB to start 'printing' euros to increase the size of the European Financial Stability Facility. This is the special purpose vehicle established and financed by eurozone members to combat the European debt crisis. Basically it is where countires in the eurozone can go to borrow money if they cannot raise it through bond issues as the markets demand to high an interest repayment.
Italy is now about €1.9 trillion in debt and France €1.6. If you add in just a few smaller countries, Greece,Belgium and two or three others you can, very quickly, get to around €4 trillion.
As investors have begun to realise that there is a very real chance their money will not be repaid they have sought to offload these eurozone IOUs (bonds) thereby making it more and more difficult for these countries to raise money as the market wants higher and higher interest on them to make the risk worthwhile. So we are back to the EFSF.
So if the Germans capitulate and increase the size of the fund to, say, €2 trillion (as many have demanded) they really need to get the printing presses rolling soon. I say this as I did a little thought exercise and if the ECB were to start actually printing physical euro notes at a rate of, say, €1 million a day, seven days a week, it will take them approximately 5,480 years to get the job finished.
Thankfully it is easier to just hit the zero twelve times on a computer .
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