As the WSJ wryly put it this morning, “Officials at the European Central Bank surely celebrated Tuesday’s survey showing the last barrage of asset purchases and negative rates had a positive effect on bank lending to households and businesses.”

Alas, as the WSJ also adds, “policy makers may want to hold off uncorking the champagne just yet. In fact, most banks answering the survey said the ECB’s policies had no impact at all.”

Indeed, while the 54 page presentation is overflowing with the traditional worthless trivia and self-effusive praise – it is an ECB document after all – the only data that did matter was on Table A3 on page 46 which asked bank respondents the following qeustion: “Over the past six months, has your bank used the additional liquidity arising from the ECB’s asset purchases for granting loans to corporations, for housing loans or for consumer loans?”

In other words, the ECB asked Europe’s banks whether QE has boosted lending.

Here are the answers:

• The number of respondents who answered “considerably”? Zero.
• The number of respondents who answered “basically not”? Between 80% and 90%

Below is the charted response for the gloomiest yet assessment the ECB’s QE policy.

And here is the same question, however looking at the future – if anywhere, banks should at least be able to stretch their optimism here: “Over the next six months, has your bank used the additional liquidity arising from the ECB’s asset purchases for granting loans to corporations, for housing loans or for consumer loans?”

Alas no.

There is a comparable survey looking at the impact of the ECB’s negative rates. The answers were even uglier.

Bottom line: the ECB’s attempt to boost lending via QE and NIRP has been an absolute  disaster… at least according to Europe’s own banks.

Source: ECB