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"also on the smaller scale in that the central banks received back more in repayments and interest than they sent out. "

This confuses me. The ECB is currently charging interest on deposits, and most banks here in the Fourth Reich are now passing those charges on to their customers. Germans, despite almost living-memory hyperinflation and multiple currency changes, being notoriously conservative investors who will stash Euromarks under the mattress as first, second, and last resort*.

Whatever the profits on liquidity support to the banking industry, they are more than blown by the now utterly insane levels of "QE", increasingly just printing money to give to the government, with no intention of ever calling it back in, let alone collecting meaningful interest on it.

*: Our wise leaders recently made any payment into a bank in cash or gold of >€10,000 subject to "proof of origin" of the money. This is of course all to do with stopping the usual doubleplusungood things, terrorism, money laundering, sex trafficking, tax evasion, and nothing at all to do with making Germans put their cash in the bank by the deadline so they can pay interest on it! In the case of cash, nothing older than 3 months will do.

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