The impact of the ECB’s €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) long-term refinancing operation (LTRO), which loaned money to commercial banks to buy sovereign bonds (a bootstrap operation that seemed as peculiar as the ECB’s financing of sovereigns to shore up the banks), was impressively short-lived. Europe’s leaders have recognized that the debt crisis in the periphery will only worsen in the absence of growth, and they have even (sometimes) recognized that austerity will not help on that front; nonetheless, they have failed to deliver an effective growth package.