Not much to say here that has not been said daily for the past 2 weeks: the ECB's Deposit Facility use soared to a new all time high of €453 billion, and increase of €7 billion overnight and higher than, well, ever. The conclusions here are well known - there was no seasonality to the year end spike (because it is now next year), and the LTRO cash is not being used, as pessimistically expected here first. When the next LTRO prices on February 29, expect this number to peak at around €700 billion. And so LTRO by LTRO, the ECB will prefund the entire roughly €2-3 trillion capitalization shortfall in European banks but not before the 3rd 2012 European bank stress test tells us banks only need €0.69 billion in capital (and Dexia is fine despite its bankruptcy).
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