by Calculated Risk on 9/15/2011 07:39:00 PM

On Friday, the European finance ministers will meet, and Timothy Geithner will make an appearance and probably propose using the EFSF like the TALF - from Reuters: Geithner Is Likely to Suggest Europe Leverage Bailout Fund (ht jb)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is likely to suggest to European finance ministers on Friday that they leverage their bailout fund along the lines of the U.S. TALF program, EU officials said.
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Under TALF, the New York Fed would lend out up to $200 billion, taking ABS as collateral with a haircut and the Treasury offered $20 billion credit protection for the Fed.

In this way, a little bit of public money leveraged a much larger central bank contribution and the same idea could work for the European Financial Stability Facility, which has 440 billion euros at its disposal, to offer credit protection to, for example, the ECB to buy euro zone sovereign bonds.

This might work, but the sovereign debt collateral haircuts have to be appropriate.

Note: Earlier today, the ECB announced three U.S. dollar liquidity-providing operations in coordination with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank.

The Greek 2 year yield declined sharply to 61%. The Greek 1 year yield is down to 129%!

The Portuguese 2 year yield declined slightly to 15.9% and the Irish 2 year yield was down to 9.1%.

Earlier:
• Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims increased to 428,000
• Industrial Production increased 0.2% in August, Capacity Utilization increases slightly
• NY and Philly Fed Manufacturing surveys show contraction
• Key Measures of Inflation increase in August
• Early Look: 2012 Social Security Cost-Of-Living Adjustment on track for 3.5% increase