It took a few hours for Germany to tell not only Italy, but the ECB, to shove it. Earlier we reported [8]that the Super Broke Mario Bros came begging on Germany's footstep, kindly requesting their daily allotment be doubled. Germany has now kindly responded. From Reuters: "German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Sunday rejected pressure to beef up the euro zone's permanent rescue facility, saying Berlin would stick to the agreement made in December for a lending capacity of 500 billion euros ($646 billion). "We are sticking to what was agreed in December," Schaeuble told public broadcaster ARD. "In March we will check whether that is sufficient." The draft treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will be discussed by euro zone finance ministers on Monday and is likely to be approved by EU leaders at their summit on Jan. 30, euro zone officials have said." As a reminder, minutes ago when we reported the first leg of this now closed transaction we said: "Poor Mario apparently fails to grasp that for Germany a plunging Euro, and thus a surging export market to offshore trading partners, is the only thing that matters now that its endogenous mercantilist import, pardon, trading partners of the past decade, the PIIGS, have no more debt capacity to buy German exports. Although even a technocrat probably understands that one does not get a weak currency by bailing out the weakest links over and over. Expect the European crisis to be with us for a long time. After all, that's precisely what Germany wants." And what Germany wants, Germany gets.
More for those who missed it the first time around:
Leaders from the single-currency bloc will review in March whether the limit of 500 billion euros is sufficient.
Markets and the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the United States, Canada and Japan, have been calling for the euro zone to bolster the capacity of its bailout funds.
But the euro zone's main paymaster, Germany, remains opposed. Schaeuble said Germany was doing more than its fair share to resolve the euro zone's debt crisis, and it was apparent that markets were beginning to regain confidence.
"We are not yet out of the woods but over the last few weeks, many (debt) auctions have shown that the markets are beginning to regain confidence."
Schaeuble said debt-stricken Greece was having difficulty implementing reforms but would have to; "otherwise, the situation cannot be resolved".
But didn't the Marios say you could double the fun and double the confidence simply by doubling the bailout money? In fact, by that logic, an infinite bailout amount would lead to infinte confidence? Or was somebody lying here?