There’s an interesting conversation between JKH and Marshall Auerback here on the constitutionality of TARGET2 balances of the NCBs of the Euro Area.

Rather than intervene in the comments, I thought I will let them exchange comments because I am not sure why Marshall Auerback thinks these are unconstitutional and more generally where he is headed in his series of posts. Links from Robert M Wuner who collects all the articles on TARGET.

The mechanics of TARGET2 are explained quite well in this ECB legal document GUIDELINE OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK of 30 December 2005 on a Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer system (TARGET)

It cannot be otherwise!

I had a comment by Alea (@Alea_) and since I don’t publish comments, I am posting it here. It is the opposite of what I thought.

Your guideline refers to TARGET and has been repealed. There aren’t any unlimited and uncollateralised credit facility between NCBs under TARGET2.

Ramanan here. Thanks Alea for commenting.

This seems right.

The ECB site for ECB/2007/2 has this:

I am still reading ECB/2007/2 and wonder how it changed it and if there is any dope on this – such as setting limits on TARGET2 flows.

According to Article 15 of Section IV of the ECB/2007/2, interlinking provisions of ECB/2005/16 continue to hold.

Hence it seems NCBs and the ECB indeed have unlimited and uncollateralised credit facility with each other!