- Andrea Beltratti, chairman at Intesa Sanpaolo SpA
The European Central Bank Wednesday allotted 529.5 billion euros in cheap three-year loans to 800 lenders in effort to boost the euro-area economy.
"It's giving us an insurance policy against having any liquidity shock," said Intesa Sanpaolo SpA Chairman Andrea Beltratti.
"Whether this is the final LTRO [longer term refinancing operations] as indicated by ECB or not will become the true indicator," Steen Jakobsen, chief economist, Saxo Bank wrote in a research note.
"If this was the last one then history tells us that ending access to extremely easy money should see risk-off, if however the market sees through the ECB and know they will do more as the economic situation deteriorates, then this is merely another step towards explosion of the ECB balance sheet which short-term is very good, and long-term risks inflation and debasing," Jakobsen added.
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