During the global banking crisis of 2007-2009 and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012 the so called ‘TARGET2 imbalances’ attracted considerable attention. Some economists interpreted them as a symptom of the ECB’s ‘stealth bail-out’. The aim of the paper is to highlight that contrary to such claim, the emergence of TARGET2 imbalances reflected the benefits of having a mutual central bank within a monetary union which facilitated cross-border funding in spite of the global financial turbulence. The ECB’s liquidity loans to commercial banks in the Eurozone debtor countries shielded the Eurozone from a much deeper financial crisis than it actually occurred. The emergence of the TARGET 2 imbalances was actually only an accounting phenomenon resulting from the fact that these liquidity loans were technically extended by the debtor countries’ national central banks which are