Already in June 2010: ECB fixed-term deposit FAIL (FT Alphaville, June 29 2010)

The ECB failed to auction the €55bn in fixed term deposits it had planned to, and what it did auction (€31.86bn) was at a much-higher rate (0.54 per cent) than what it offered at the start of its Securities Markets Programme (SMP). The market seems to be holding tight to liquidity.

Economics is politics by other means

Quoting from ECB's annual accounts (pdf, page 15):
The ECB's holdings of securities purchased under both programmes at the end of 2010 were
as follows:

 

                                  2010 €            2009 €               Change € 

Covered bond purchase programme   4,823,413,246     2,181,842,083     2,641,571,163

Securities Markets Programme      13,102,563,262           0           13,102,563,262

Total                            17,925,976,508    2,181,842,083    15,744,134,425

...
and comparing with their current position

which is probably an apples-to-oranges comparison (holdings/outstanding amount?)

So I got the wrong end of the stick, there has not been a massive buy-up of bonds by the ECB in 2011. They have either decided that the markets are correctly pricing the bonds (in contradiction with their "mark-to-book" policy), or have renounced market intervention (recognition that they are powerless?)

In any case, if the ECB holds €50B of Greek bonds, they were mostly bought in 2010, and that comes out to more than a third of the total of SMP holdings (75B) and CBP (60B), no?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}