V začetku maja je guverner ECB Mario Draghi nekoliko presenetil trge z napovedjo nekonvencionalnih ukrepov, da bi ECB prisilila poslovne banke, da več kreditirajo in manj “parkirajo” sposojen denar pri ECB. Banke naj bi namreč denar, ki so si ga prej sposodile pri ECB, v obliki depozitov po nižji obrestni meri spet “parkirale” pri ECB (okrog 120 milijard evrov). Zato je Draghi razmišljal, da bi banke prisilil, da ta denar posojajo naprej gospodarstvu, in sicer tako da bi bankam zaračunaval provizijo za njihove parkirane depozite pri ECB. To bi efektivno pomenilo negativne obrestne mere na depozite bank pri ECB.

Kot pravi Megan Greene, glavna ekonomistka pri Maverick Intelligence (prej pa v podobni vlogi na Economist Intelligence Unit in Roubini Global Institute), ki prihaja naslednji teden v Ljubljano, to ni najboljša ideja:

Instead of lending the money to businesses and individuals, the banks could simply park it elsewhere — for example, in the sovereign bonds of Germany and other countries perceived to be financially healthy. This might benefit Germany by further pushing down its borrowing costs, but would do little to unblock credit to businesses. Banks might even try to cover their losses on the ECB deposits by charging higher interest rates on business loans, precisely the opposite of the desired outcome.

Even if negative deposit rates did spur more business lending, that’s not necessarily good. If it prompts banks to make risky investments at a time when most of them already have a number of bad loans on their books, it could damage their balance sheets further.

There are better ways for the ECB to encourage banks to lend. Banks might make more business loans, for example, if the ECB made it easier to use those loans as collateral for cheap central-bank credit. The ECB could do so by loosening requirements for the amount and type of business loans that it accepts in exchange for liquidity, and by lending more against a given value of loans.

The central bank could go a step further and agree to purchase business loans in the secondary markets. Banks would be more willing to accept the risk of lending to small and medium-sized enterprises if they knew they could turn around and sell those loans to the ECB. For now, the ECB is unwilling to accept this degree of risk on its own balance sheet. That could change as the recession in the euro area deepens further.

Vir: Megan Greene, Bloomberg