Na de aankondiging van ‘Operation Twist‘,  de publieke ‘massage’ van Barroso voor Euro Bonds en de gigantische dollar injectie door centrale banken, wordt momenteel her en der de idee opgeworpen om bijkomend een Euro TARP programma te introduceren. TARP staat voor Troubled Asset Relief Fund, een speciaal fonds om noodlijdende obligaties van op te kopen. De methode werd tijdens de kredietcrisis in de VS in 2008 – 2009 geïntroduceerd. Via BI:

Reports are swirling that the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Facility could mimic TARP in order to restore confidence in the eurozone banking sector and ease the region out of the sovereign debt crisis. Three years ago the U.S. government implemented Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP) originally with the intention to buy toxic assets from troubled American banks. In its eurozone flavor, this plan would allow the EFSF to recapitalize banks in order to secure their survival regardless of a sovereign default. A J.P. Morgan investor note published last week explains how such a system might work: The initial focus of US TARP was to purchase “toxic” securities from bank balance sheets (i.e. targeting the asset side of the balance sheets) but with time of the essence the objective quickly shifted towards bolstering capital (the right side of the balance sheet), a goal that could be accomplished much faster. Europe may want to contemplate a similar shift — instead of devoting the EFSF towards sovereign bailouts and secondary market bond purchases, the money should go towards overcapitalizing bank balance sheets and removing all doubt from the market place. By adopting such a policy in the eurozone, EU policymakers could effectively mitigate the rising costs of debt in Spain and Italy and calm investor fears that the EFSF will not have the capability or time to support failing sovereigns. Banks would find it much easier to sell debt if investors no longer doubted equity strength…There is the question of whether the EFSF is even large enough to bolster all the region’s banks but it can start first at the top and adopt a TARP-like strategy (i.e. force the biggest institutions to take capital first to help calm markets).