The ECB recently published in their Occasional Paper Series the following report (No. 397) – Prohibition of monetary financing: an economic perspective – which purports to justify the current practice of central banks of not directly buying the debt issued by their governments, despite many central banks at various times since this practice became the norm, buying very large quantities of government debt in the secondary markets. The discussion really avoids the issue and just rehearses the usual guff: central bank independence, maintaining fiscal discipline, and hyperinflation myths – which when one digs more deeply have never stood up to scrutiny. And when one puts the class element into the discussion we see through the fictions. Governments and their central banks will always bail out large corporations with influence when the need arises and never talk about their ‘independence’ being compromised etc. The reality is that the large-scale bond-buying programmes in Europe by the ECB saved several Eurozone governments from insolvency during the GFC and after because they funded the government deficits at times when the private bond markets were pushing for unacceptably high yields on the government debt.