The Economist on the Greek default

Other aspects of the restructuring are more troubling. One is that the European Central Bank (ECB) was able to sidestep a coercive write-down of its Greek bonds, acquired as part of a programme to stabilise bond markets in troubled euro-zone countries. That will undermine its power to stop future market panic through bond purchases, since investors now know that the larger the ECB holding of a country’s bonds is, the bigger the write-down private investors would suffer in a restructuring.