Over the weekend, The Slog has established via credit sources throughout the eurozone that last week’s global central bank intervention was primarily motivated by an immediate and serious crisis at the French bank, Credit Agricole.

The revelations emerged after a number of senior sources made clear to me that the current eurozone situation as a whole would not be relieved by a repeat of the September 15th exercise. (Credit Agricole was not the purpose of the original enquiry among these sources. If anything, my money was on BNP/Paribas).

“The effects of such moves are only ever temporary,” said one, “And in this case, the scale of the coordination was designed to suggest the firepower thing, while disguising a pressing need”.

There is no suggestion that the earlier September intervention derived from the same or similar needs. But a second source added:

“This was a covering move. It looks good in the media, and Credit Agricole could’ve f**ked everything up….so it was a no-brainer. A whole lot of insiders know it was mainly about Creditag. The main players saw it coming.”

The seriousness of this news puts the coming week’s eurozone events into sharp perspective. An inestimable amount depends on no ‘events’ getting in the way of  The Big Announcement come Friday. Until that denouement, no amount of money will be too much to keep things on some kind of even keel.

PS Before anyone detects any triumphalism in my tone, let me make it clear that we have rather a lot of money deposited with CA