[raesene9]

I'm not sure that the ECBs action is the cause so much as the effect.

My understanding of this was that the greek banks are (without ECB help) insolvent and have been for some time. They are unable to raise capital on the open market, as the open market has decided that they are not confident enough in those banks to lend them money.

As a result the Emergency Liquidity Assitance from the ECB has been used, but that was only provided on the basis that the greek banks were solvent but had temporary liquidity problems.

As far as I understand it, as soon as Greece is no longer in a bailout Program (Tuesday by current reckoning) those banks will not be solvent any more (they hold large amounts of Greek government debt), and ELA can't (without some form of change of rules for the ECB) continue.

The ECB is just following it's rules and it's been known that this approach is where they would likely need to go for some time, absent a political intervention from the Europgroup or the IMF.