SPRINGTIME has come early for the bankers, spivs and speculators of Europe’s financial markets.

President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi has awarded them at least €1,080 billion (around £828bn) worth of extra gambling chips to play with over the next 18 months or more.

This money dwarfs the €488bn paid out by the so-called “troika” — the ECB, European Commission and International Monetary Fund — to EU member state governments since the 2008 financial crash.

According to Mr Draghi, the main purpose of his new “quantitative easing” (QE) initiative is to reverse the deflationary trend in the eurozone and lift its economy out of the doldrums.

Every month from March until September 2016, central banks in the eurozone will receive €60bn in total from the ECB.

Unlike previous “bailouts” from the troika, the QE dosh must be used only by central banks and only for the purchase of corporate and government bonds and other financial assets from banks, hedge funds and similar institutions.

The democratically elected “go-between” — the national government of each eurozone country — is being cut out altogether.

This is fully in keeping with the anti-democratic character of the EU. Vital steps towards its strategic goal of economic and monetary union included the “independence” of every central bank from its national government and the establishment of the ECB itself, free from any democratic influence and eventually with the power to direct central banks across the EU.

In theory, the banks will recycle their QE proceeds into the stock markets or lend directly to companies, small businesses and home buyers, thereby inflating economies and stimulating growth.

In practice, QE doesn’t work like that. In the US, subsidies to the auto industry have done much more to revive activity.

In Japan — the world’s second biggest and flattest economy — QE has had little effect so far.

In Britain, most of the £375bn spent on QE has vanished into bank reserves, or boosted share prices with little effect on industrial investment, or been gambled on the currency markets.

Some of it has — in the absence of more housebuilding — inflated a property price bubble and more has been snaffled by fat cat directors and shareholders than loaned to small businesses.

No wonder Mr Draghi does not rule out extending his QE transfusion beyond September 2016.

But the real purpose of the ECB initiative is to give money to the banks for financial “assets” that are already risky, losing their value or about to crash should Greece and other eurozone states default on their financial obligations.

Central banks will then be left holding worthless pieces of paper and ordinary people will again have to pick up the tab. That’s why Germany has insisted that 80 per cent of QE spending by eurozone central banks must be at their own risk, with only 20 per cent shared by the ECB (and therefore the Bundesbank).

That’s the real story of the bailouts. Ultimately, state guarantees and public money have been used to rescue the banks, not workers and their families, who have seen their wages, benefits and pensions fall as economies stagnate or shrink.

If the primary aim of QE really is to boost the economy, the ECB would have done better to give the eurozone’s 333 million citizens €200 (about £140) a month each on condition they spend it. Instead, the new programme is designed to reinforce austerity strategies.

Either way, the result will be a fall in the value of the euro, making British exports to continental Europe more expensive and its imports here cheaper.

The good news for Europe’s bankers will be bad news for Britain’s workers as well.