Euro Statement II - Translated

Well we have just had the addendum to the original Euro Statement, Team Macro Man once again try and offer some clarity through their translation.

1. The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) welcomes the announcements made by the governments of Italy and Spain concerning new measures and reforms in the areas of fiscal and structural policies. The Governing Council considers a decisive and swift implementation by both governments as essential in order to substantially enhance the competitiveness and flexibility of their economies, and to rapidly reduce public deficits.

Italy and Spain are now in the same bucket as Greece and, likewise, should do exactly what we tell them if they stand any chance of us pretending we can help.

2. The Governing Council underlines the importance of the commitment of all Heads of State or Government to adhere strictly to the agreed fiscal targets, as reaffirmed at the euro area summit of 21 July 2011. A key element is also the enhancement of the growth potential of the economy.

Hey, we don't make up these rules for you just to keep breaking them, so please, come on guys, at least try and look like you are playing by the rules.

3. The Governing Council considers essential the prompt implementation of all the decisions taken at the euro area summit. In this perspective, the Governing Council welcomes the joint commitment expressed by Germany and France today.

Thanks to Germany and France reading their emails despite being on holiday we were able to have a quick conference call to patch something together. Now get on with it, we should be on the beach.

4. The Governing Council attaches decisive importance to the declaration of the Heads of State or Government of the euro area in the inflexible determination to fully honour their own individual sovereign signature as a key element in ensuring financial stability in the euro area as a whole.

We've studied Neural Linguistic Programming and hope that by saying "inflexible determination to fully honour" enough, they really will.

5. It equally considers fundamental that governments stand ready to activate the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in the secondary market, on the basis of an ECB analysis recognising the existence of exceptional financial market circumstances and risks to financial stability, once the EFSF is operational.

We have just had a report from the 12yr old quants in our analysis department suggesting that there may be some stresses in the Italian and Spanish bond markets. Now whilst it might have been as plain as day to the rest of you for the past 18 months, we are now pleased to say we can move one slow step forward to doing the bleeding obvious and hope that no one dissents.

6. It is on the basis of the above assessments that the ECB will actively implement its Securities Markets Programme. This programme has been designed to help restoring a better transmission of our monetary policy decisions – taking account of dysfunctional market segments – and therefore to ensure price stability in the euro area.

We are going to buy hopefully enough Spain and Italy tomorrow (with whose money we aren't sure) to "shock and awe" the evil speculator out of our garden. Lets hope that works and you don't realise how screwed we really are.