ECB board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said today that the ECB is implacably opposed to restructuring Greek debt. But it has just signed up to exactly that.

Fed Treasury boss Tim Geithner (with absolutely no sense of irony) warned the world that a heavier touch of regulation was required in derivatives trading. But he was the man who defended Wall Street’s last derivatives disaster.

Germany’s senior bank regulator has sharply criticised the European Banking Authority for its conduct of this year’s bank stress tests. Jochen Sanio, head of BaFin, said the stress tests had been too hurried, and had overestimated the need for capital reserves. But most other people familiar with the tests expressed the opinion that they were something of a joke – a thinly veiled (and vain) attempt to persuade doubting markets that the banks were solvent really.

And the IMF has ‘strongly backed’ efforts by the UK and a number of other European countries to retain their power to impose tighter rules, including higher capital requirements, on their local banks. But the IMF presided over a hopelessly inadequate system of capital requirements for more than a decade.

I thought I’d mention this at the end of the day, just in case readers might be in any doubt about how much notice to take of this posturing bollocks.