ECB Prepares For Europe's Next Sovereign Debt Crisis

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Thirteen years ago, Mario Draghi, then President of the European Central Bank, opened the liquidity floodgates to prevent the eurozone from collapsing. Since then, the structural problems have remained unresolved. We are now facing the next chapter of the roughly patched-over debt crisis. It is time for the ECB to prepare its emergency toolkit.

For some time now, a worrying pattern has emerged in global financial markets: long-term government bonds are coming under selling pressure — even those of leading economies such as the U.S., Japan, the U.K., and, to a notable extent, France. As a result, yields are rising, along with the refinancing costs for already heavily indebted nations.

Financial Architecture Severely Damaged

It is the so-called long end of the yield curve that alarms both policymakers and central banks. The stability of global financial architecture rests on the long-term bonds of the U.S., Japan, and the eurozone. Banks, sovereign pension funds, and insurance systems have already paid a heavy toll from the sell-off in this segment. The structure has been severely weakened — and Europe is now facing the next debt crisis.

It can no longer be ignored: long-term government bonds, once considered safe and yielding positive real returns, have lost considerable trust. A look at France’s political turmoil and the decline of the U.K. underscores that escaping the debt spiral — with ever-growing annual deficits and collapsing social systems in an aging, migration-stressed European society — seems highly unrealistic.

The consequence: anyone not legally obligated to hold these securities is offloading them, fleeing to so-called safe havens such as precious metals or cash, often in U.S. dollars or Swiss francs — a tried-and-true pattern when times get tough.

Europe in the Crosshairs

While the yield on ten-year UK government bonds rose above 5.7% on Tuesday afternoon — the highest since 2009 — the crisis in France is intensifying dramatically. On September 8, a confidence vote on Prime Minister François Bayrou’s austerity budget is expected to fail. The country faces political chaos and a planned general strike, which, following the sad tradition of this fragmented, migration-impacted society, is likely to erupt into violent street clashes in the Banlieues.

France has long become an ungovernable state, now at risk of being the starting point for the next eurozone debt crisis.

Dark clouds are gathering over Europe — and Germany will not be spared. Once praised for its conservative fiscal policy, the country has opened the door to severe market disruptions with a trillion-euro debt program. If Germany sacrifices its creditworthiness just to buy time and a temporary fix for its social system crisis, it will drag down its EU partners. Since the start of the monetary union, markets have intertwined the community’s creditworthiness with that of Germany.

None of Europe’s crises — neither overregulation, the energy crisis, nor migration chaos — has ever been effectively controlled. The continent now stands exposed to the next debt crisis.

ECB in Action

The next debt crisis is likely to follow the pattern of its predecessor 15 years ago: contagion spreading from country to country, each tested by waves of bond sell-offs on stability and resilience. What may originate in France will eventually reach Germany via the heavily indebted southern European states. The question is: can the ECB stabilize the situation, as it did with its emergency toolkit back then?

Every sovereign debt crisis is also a banking crisis. A significant portion of government bonds is held on commercial banks’ balance sheets — and a sharp drop in market value risks dangerous over-indebtedness across the financial sector. To mitigate this, the ECB has developed an arsenal of liquidity and stabilization measures, forming the core of its emergency toolkit. These include LTROs (Long-Term Refinancing Operations) and TLTROs (Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations), which provide banks with long-term, low-interest loans to ensure liquidity and maintain credit flow to businesses and households.

Highly Leveraged Fiat Credit

There is also Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), a kind of safety valve for institutions under acute pressure, usually collateralized by government bonds or other so-called “high-quality assets.” The toolkit is complemented by forward guidance and interest rate policy, aimed at steering expectations and stabilizing interest rate markets — often more psychologically than materially.

Here lies a central flaw and logical inconsistency in central banking: the very assets deemed “high-quality” contributed to the crisis. Highly leveraged, virtually unsecured fiat credit — without backing in gold or energy — has turned the financial system into a Ponzi-like structure, inevitably driving massive credit expansion.

This context also includes Germany’s massive debt program and, according to EU policymakers, the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. If the credit tap falters, the house of cards collapses.

Focus on Interest Rate Manipulation

The ECB’s main focus remains the stabilization of government bond markets — the sector most vulnerable in a crisis. Deeply entwined with the EU power center in Brussels, the central bank acts almost as a liquidity department. When panic strikes the bond market, it will start manipulating yields and clearing the market, as it did 15 years ago.

Emergency programs include the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), which buys government bonds to increase liquidity, and Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), activated only if affected countries commit to reforms. Newly introduced is the Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI), which allows the ECB to buy bonds to reduce excessive yield differences between member states and ensure monetary transmission. This instrument operates largely clandestinely: market interventions are not always immediately visible and may be carried out gradually, even via proxy actors, to avoid market panic.

The ECB’s policy can be summarized simply: ahead of the looming debt collapse, its task is to manipulate the entire yield curve downward to maintain the illusion of controlled public debt — and to prevent private investors from panicking. The persistent operation of the ECB is evident in the yield corridors that long-term government bonds have followed for some time.

Transparency? Virtually nonexistent. Backroom dealings between the ECB and major capital pools are routine. Markets are actively managed and manipulated — the free market and the disciplining force of rising interest rates (bond vigilantes) are long gone.

Emergency Patches and Soothing Pills

Ultimately, the names of ECB instruments are irrelevant. Their core function is to smooth short-term market fluctuations and provide policymakers with repeated room to maneuver for an ever-expanding state. The ECB itself has become a malignant force within the euro system: market-based reforms are impossible as long as policymakers can rely on its backstop — whether for green climate agendas, military build-ups, or other dubious projects.

The EU Commission and ECB aim to establish a unified debt mechanism, consolidate national debts under the commission’s umbrella, and integrate the ECB as a liquidity pool to stabilize markets. Europe is thus steering toward centralized socialism, with the ECB as a key enabler.

In a systemic crisis, the eurozone’s main pillars — France, Italy, and Germany — would be drawn into the downward spiral. It would be naive to believe that the situation could be stabilized solely through ECB credit injections and short-term liquidity measures.

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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.