The result was that German workers, as their share of their employers' profits fell, could not afford the goods they produced. Deprived of domestic demand, surplus German products thus flowed to places like Ireland, Greece and Spain, where demand for them was supported by the loans Franz and his Frankfurt banker colleagues, dipping into the German corporate profit glut, had shifted to Europe's periphery. The export of German goods and German profits to the rest of the eurozone created debt-fuelled annual growth of 5 per cent in Greece and Ireland [...]

the labour market measures--known as the Hartz reforms--that the German Federal Republic enacted as soon as euro notes began to circulate. Implemented at a time of US-led growth, these reforms aimed at enhancing German exports and their competitiveness by making them cheaper through reducing German workers' average take-home pay significantly, both by cutting hourly wage rates and pushing large numbers of workers into so-called mini-jobs.

But this was not a bailout. Greece was never bailed out. [...] Greece's bailout, then Ireland's, then Portugal's, then Spain's primarily rescue packages for French and German banks.

with every visitation by the troika, the dream of shared European prosperity was dealt another blow

given the bank's parlous state

the Outright Monetary Transactions programme. [...] the ECB would step into the money markets to buy unlimited numbers of Italian and Spanish bonds in order to stabilise their value--and with them the interest rates that the Italian and Spanish governments paid to refinance their public debt.

the Bundesbank waiting in the wings to denounce Mario Draghi as an apostate

Warrants are essentially options to buy more shares at the original low share price.

The idea is simple: the central bank buys from commercial banks other people's debts. Who are these 'other people'? They can be families that owe mortgages to the bank, corporations, or even a government that has sold bonds to the bank. In exchange for these debts and the stream of income they produce, the central bank deposits dollars or euros in an account the commercial bank keeps at the central bank. Where does the central bank find the money? From thin air, is the answer: they are just numbers that the central bank conjures up and adds to the commercial bank's account. Why do this? In the hopes that the commercial bank will use this money by lending it to businesses wishing to invest and to families wanting to buy houses, cars, gadgets and so on. If this happens, economic activity will rise again as liquidity sets in. [...]

[...]

To cut a long story short, a great deal of believing must occur before QE delivers on its promise to boost the real economy. [...] banks tend to lend the money conjured up by the central bank not to other banks or to Jack and Jill but to companies. Except that these companies do not invest the borrowed money in machinery and workers, fearful that the demand will not be there for extra output produced. What they do is to buy back their own shares in the stock market in order to increase their price and collect a nice bonus for having 'added value to the company'. While this process does boost, to some extent, upmarket house prices and demand for luxuries, the only genuine beneficiary is gross inequality.

John Maynard Keynyes, back in 1936, had to quote Ibsen's Wild Duck in order to convey to his reader the problem that a central bank faces when interest rates fall to zero but the economy is still in the doldrums