ECB bought $20.6 billion in bonds last week

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank spent euro14.3 billion ($20.6 billion) last week buying government bonds to keep the region’s government debt crisis at bay until the eurozone’s newly-strengthened bailout fund can step into the role.

The amount of bond purchases disclosed on Monday was short of the previous week’s figure of euro22 billion but close to market expectations.

Buying Italian and Spanish bonds on financial markets has driven down borrowing rates that were threatening those two countries with financial ruin. European officials want the eurozone’s bailout fund to take over the purchases, but national parliaments will not give their approval for that until this fall.

That has left the central bank with the main burden of fighting off market turmoil. Last week’s purchases ran the bank’s total spent in supporting shaky eurozone government bonds to euro110.5 billion since the program was launched in May, 2010.

Eurozone leaders agreed on July 21 to expand the powers of their euro440 billion bailout fund to let it purchase government bonds on the secondary market — that is, from other bond investors, not directly loaning money to the governments. They also gave it the power to loan money quickly to countries in trouble and to help recapitalize banks. Those powers can be used to support financially troubled governments and prevent bond market turmoil while governments use the respite to clean up their finances.

However, the changes have not yet gone through national parliaments. During the delay, market fears about potential defaults spread increasingly to Italy and Spain, which are too large to be bailed out.

The ECB decided to re-start bond purchases at an emergency meeting Aug. 7 and began them the next day, driving bond yields down to under 5 percent for both countries.

Those yields reflect the costs the countries would face if they turned to the bond market for new borrowing. Their yields had previously been over 6 percent, heading toward the level that forced the eurozone to rescue Greece, Portugal and Ireland, which together are only 6 percent of the 17-country eurozone.