Zero Hedge has an interesting rumour regarding the possibility of the ECB announcing a €600 billion loan facility to aid European banks this weekend. Full text, along with a selection of the (most amusing) comments below :

Euro (and the market) surging on rumors that the ECB is preparing to bail out 1,100 banks in Europe. And with that the bailout moves officially to Europe. From the dealer community:

CHATTER OF NEWS ECB LOAN FACILITY GOING AROUND

• Chatter of €600bn ECB loan facility to be announced over the weekend
• Terms mentioned are 1% for 1 year loans to cover 1,100 banks
• UNCONFIRMED – Euro is moving on this chatter

Imagine Lehman. Times 1,000. Now it gets fun.

Fun indeed, now the entertainment :

It is just a matter of when, not if.  The amount of power needed to hold back the water grows exponentially daily.

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hey they might do it, just dont want any part of it.
I reckon trichet has been soundly spanked for his failure to ‘inspire confidence’ yesterday.
Tought spot to be in, he knows its all held together with hopium, but wont compromise himself so far as to make noises about buying bonds. The middle ground made him seem a fool.

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I heard rumors for months that Greece was getting a bailout, not a fakeout.

There is no political will to bailout in the EuroZone like there is in Amerika, thank goodness.

Europe will wait to do something when the SHTF, and not before.

When poo is hurtling through the air, encasing all its stunned citizens in fecal material, then the ECB will finally act, and say, “We just had to do something!  $h!t was flying everywhere!”

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HAHAHA!!! silly rabbits. Bailouts crush currencies! ECB’s printing press ain’t big enough to bail out 1100 VD infested hookers.

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What strike me as funny is that this is being presented as if it’s some brilliant, completely out-of-the-box idea.

Like some mid-level ECB bureaucrat snapped his fingers in the middle of a meeting with other mid-level ECB bureaucrats and said “I’ve got it – let’s print-up a metric fuckton of cash with absolutely nothing to back it up and lend it out to banks at little to no interest!!! It’s totally bloody brilliant!!!  And completely original!!!!!”

Heck, he might have even mentioned a helicopter, just for effect.

Metric Fuckton should be a new international currency unit I think as even trillions just don’t have any bite to them any more.

Update

It would appear that the rumour is confirmed – Bloomberg has the story.