TARGET : €2,159,025,000,000,000 in transactions since 2009

Yep. That's right. The European system for interbank transfers called TARGET (Trans-European Real-Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System) has processed over 2 quadrillion euros worth of transactions since 2009.

You can get all the details from the wonderful ECB databank here.  Of course, you won't find the totals there. They only give you the total values month by month, and country by country. But, if you put all the numbers into an excel sheet, and add them up (something that I have done), you get the following

• 2009 :                €551,172 billion
• 2010 :                €593.195 billion
• 2011 :                €612,936 billion
• 2012 (Jan-Jul) : €401,722 billion

Since the average in 2012 is so far €57,389 billion a month, it looks like 2012 is going to be a truly bumper year for the banks. They should be able to manage over €688 trillion if they keep it up. That's over 12% up on last year.  It's nice to know that there are some people out there for whom business is booming.

Here's a table showing the breakdown country by country

Germany is obviously doing a lot for the levels of transactions, with a whopping €721 trillion - well done Germany! But France, Spain and the Netherlands aren't doing badly either, with over €300 trillion each.

One country is very notable by its absence - the UK. They don't want to join up with those in Continental Europe. So we can certainly add some more eye watering numbers for CHAPS (who had processed a total of  1 quadrilion pounds by the 25th of July 2011) , CLS Ltd ($4.8 trillion a day in 2011),  NYSE Liffe (who managed €2.67 trillion in a single day on the 13th of January this year) as well as many others.

The moral to all this? Well, just imagine if the 0.1% Financial transaction tax had been in place since 2009. The TARGET system alone would have generated something like €2 trillion in revenue for Europe.

And we are told that there is no money about. Something tells me that someone is pulling the wool over our eyes.