ECB dips its toe into dead sea of rebundled debt

Frankfurt

THE European Central Bank (ECB) is set to embark this week on a scheme to buy the kind of rebundled debt that sparked the global economic crash. With sparse investor interest, its efforts could fall short.

Asset-backed securities (ABS), reparcelled debt that mixes high-risk loans with safer credit, gained notoriety when rebundled home loans in the United States unravelled to spark financial turmoil.

Seven years on, seeking to pump money into a moribund eurozone economy, the ECB believes the same type of debt may make it easier to get credit to companies. It will be safe, the ECB argues, because such European debt, whether car loans…