I mean to say the ECB rigged the tests to ensure the results were acceptable to 'the markets'

Just let the euro implode - I think the deflationary effects are inevitable. Whether a western country has deflation and a strong currency or moderate inflation and a falling currency are just different ways of consumers having less spending (and earning) power. It's inevitable because the developed economies, which previously had linked in small countries with benefits all round, linked in to China and India, two countries that dwarf the west in terms of bodies. As an analogy, it's like connecting 1000s of carriages to a train that was already struggling due to lack of high quality fuel. China and India for the foreseeable future will offer far more downward wage pressure than they will yield potential markets. This is because their people are poor, so have little spending power for what the west makes, and anyway more likely to save because that's both their nature and their need given the lack of welfare systems. Add in the cultural difference that they don't have a wide and deep leisure culture to support domestic consumption, and you can see why in a connected world they will export deflation in one form or another. It's also deflationary for the same reasons when they move en-masse to the west. Generally, Asians aren't great consumers. They buy property and gold but they don't partake in the wide range of passtimes common in the west that support the advanced economies. The media trumpet this as positive values of thrift, but it's a requirement of an advanced economy that there is advanced consumption. We really do need to work to live not the other way around. India and China (and much of Asia) are at totally different stages of human and economic development. Linking then to the west will be a shock . . . The fact of the matter is that the ECB can 'get-away' with these tests because of (1) German and French collusion to paint a 'nice picture' to please the EU elite and (2) the ECB has the luxury that it is not the actual the lender of last resort within the EU, and therefore does not have real market responsibility re adverse market feedback for its advice and actions.