A bank’s whole loans would not usually be sold in great number even under stressed circumstances and, even to the degree they were, other banks’ portfolios of loans are generally not marked down because of the stressed bank’s sales. Second, the possible availability of central bank liquidity support does not obviate the need for higher capital for intermediaries reliant on short-term wholesale funding.
Moreover, the improvement in the “structural” primary budget balance by more than 17 percentage points of potential GDP between 2009 and 2016 means that, taking the impact of the economic cycle into account, the fiscal adjustment in Greece was more than double the one achieved in other Member States under similar programmes.