The president of the European Central Bank, Jean Claude Trichet, has only created confusion on the markets. European Commissioner Olli Rehn, on the other hand, has launched reassuring messages. These are the opinions of Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, who seems to have wanted to send a strong signal of disappointment to the Eurotower, guilty of not having bought the Madrid and Rome bonds yesterday.
“I have to say it wasn't among his best – said Salgado commenting on the press conference held yesterday by Trichet -. I followed it and I think it brought some confusion to the markets. Throughout the press conference, which was very long, of an anomalous length, news appeared according to which the ECB was buying Irish and Portuguese government bonds", two countries "that already have financial aid programmes, so it was not foreseen that such an intervention would be necessary. In fact, the markets were rather expecting maneuvers on the bonds of Italy and Spain. But the ECB has never wanted to provide details on the nationalities of the government bonds it buys and, when it deems fit, it carries out operations aimed at segments of the bond market under stress.
