And so the ECB's balance sheet, once upon a time clean of any monetization interventions, continues to deteriorate, and has now grown to a record €143 billion, after the bank disclosed €13.96 billion in PIIGS debt purchases in the prior week. This is an additional €70 billion since the SMP was expanded to purchase Italian and Spanish debt in early August (predicated by Italy complying with an Austerity prgoram that it has since made a complete mockery of). So for those complaining about the ECB pursuing Quantitative Easing, we wonder what one would call nearly $100 billion in bond repurchases in the open market in the past month: this is about as much as the Fed would purchase in its most active monetization month during either QE1 or QE2!