In fact it would appear that emergency liquidity actually dropped by €12b last month, at least according to [Independent article - see Jim's post].
Jim
Hi Jim,
The Independent article you attach is from Friday morning before the Central Bank of Ireland issued its data for January 2011.
The nature of the €14bn of self-issuance (that is, issued by the bank to itself) is not entirely clear at present. As far as I can tell at this stage, the self-issuance is a technical device which substitutes a sterling-backed security which is not repoable at the ECB with a euro-denominated security which is. The self-issuance seems to have taken place on 26th/27th January 2011 and at this stage, it is unclear if these Fixed Rate Notes were in play on 28th January, 2011 which was the cut-off for the January, 2011 data produced by the CBI.
So at this stage, the report from the CBI says that there was €51bn of "other assets" at the end of January, 2011 most of which is likely to be ELA. In addition there was €126bn of lending by the ECB to "Irish" banks (all financial institutions in the State including those that don't service the domestic economy). We do not yet know what the total amount of lending of the ECB to the 20 domestic Irish financial institutions (NAMA banks, ILP, credit union, post office, "foreign" subsidiaries like KBC, NIB, Rabo - this was €94.6bn at the end of December 2010) and of course we never get data from the CBI on the six State-guaranteed financial institutions (AIB, Anglo, BoI, EBS, ILP, INBS).
The entry on NAMAwinelake referred to by Ciaran above, has been updated to reflect the uncertainty of the nature of the self-issuance and its issuance timing in the context of the CBI cut-off date. I am veering towards believing that lending by the CBI and ECB in fact may have dropped by €6bn from €183bn to €177bn in January, though because there is no split of lending between domestic and other banks in the State, I am not sure there is any call for complaceny or believing the liquidity crisis is at an end.
I am veering towards believing the self-issuance will not impact upon the ECB/CBI liquidity numbers because I believe at this stage that the €14bn was simply moving sterling-backed security which was securing €14bn of ELA at the CBI with €14bn of euro-backed security which will secure lending from the ECB. We should find out when the February 2011 data is released by the CBI mid-March 2011.