The European Central Bank left the level of Emergency Liquidity Assistance available to Greek banks unchanged from a week ago, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
“During a telephone call on Wednesday, the Governing Council left the cap on Emergency Liquidity Assistance at 80.2 billion euros ($87.6 billion), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Greek lenders still have a liquidity buffer of about 3 billion euros, one of the people said.”
According to private Mega TV, it was the Greek government that did not ask for increase of the ELA, because the cash withdrawal had stabilized.
At the same time other “people” on social media claim that the 3 billion euros buffer was available last week and that in the meantime Greeks have rushed to the banks and withdrew a couple of hundred millions of euro as the deadlock in Greece-Creditors negotiations continued. Oh, no! Sorry, wrong cause.
According to private ANT1 TV, yesterday Tuesday, Greeks rushed to the banks and withdrew 300 million euro when they heard Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis saying that a small tax of 1-2 per thousand would be imposed on cash transactions at the banks and the ATMs.
Two hours later, the Greek Finance Ministry denied Varoufakis’ “plan” saying that it was a proposal posed by the creditors but rejected by the Greek side. However Greeks were at the banks when the small tax was denied and so they kept withdrawing..
A couple of days earlier, when the rumors about upcoming capital controls were in, Greeks went and withdrew 100 million euro, notes ANT1 citing banks’ officials .
Why Greeks withdrew more on the threat of the small tax and not on capital control scenario, nobody can answer.
“From beginning of the year 30 billion euro have left the Greek banks,” says the ANT1 television.
Guess how much money each Greek withdrew yesterday. If each and every Greek from the 10 million residents of this country went to the bank yesterday, it means each Greek withdrew 30 euro.
I didn’t go.
