As capital has ebbed out of the periphery, banks in northern Europe have found themselves flush with funds, which they have put on deposit at the ECB.If the ECB introduced negative deposit rates, banks would have to pay for leaving money at the central bank.
Adding up the other costs to open an account, cardholders have to fork over $140 just to have access to money they put on deposit with the bank to back their spending on the card.
It's not enough to put on a deposit for a house, but it's certainly enough to put a deposit on a new car," he told the BBC last year.
On my travels I have yet to met anyone who intends using the proceeds of selling a bond to a national central bank to put monies on deposit in, say, the Greek banking sector.
As such, it put $550m on deposit and then entered a series of trades in complex derivatives linked to the shares of companies including Citigroup, Banco Santander and EDF Energy.
Jörg Asmussen, who sits on the central bank's executive board, said that the bank would remain accommodative "as long as needed," although he sounded cautious about charging banks to put money on deposit at the central bank, something that could help hold down borrowing costs.
Despite some recent tinkering, the system remains hugely biased against savers and in favour of borrowers and intermediaries such as banks and securities firms.Savers have little choice over where to invest their money; for reasons that will be explained later, most of them put it on deposit at the bank or, increasingly, the post office.
They decided to put it on deposit with multi-national banks so they could lend it to developing countries to finance their oil imports.
One Lebanese man said he was willing to forfeit the $15,000 deposit he put on a new home before Sept. 11 in order to leave.
Despite the problems, Virgin Galactic says 800 people have already put down deposits on a ticket, including pop bad-boy Justin Bieber and actor Ashton Kutcher.
There is no indication that any high street bank is considering charging retail customers for putting money on deposit.
