as early as 11 February 2010 our commentary on the crisis homed in on the fact that

What the ECB cannot do is fund a public debt issue, and that makes some sense from certain ideological perspectives.<bblockquote>Because by having passed through the bid-ask spread of a major investment bank, it is suddenly converted from a loan into a monetary instrument?

The last [many] months have been an exercise in teasing out the conequences of that ideological perspective.