The U.S. market surged 4% and closed at their day highs while the Germany's DAX surged 5% and paced an advance across the Eurozone.
This came after a coordinated effort by European Central Banks, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, and the Federal Reserve to pledge liquidity to troubled banks by increasing swap lines that allow additional dollars to flow through to the banking system. Effectively, it is now cheaper for the EU to get liquidity because the Fed cut rates on dollars they lend to EU banks in exchange for their currency. Interestingly, this came a day after S&P's downgrade of the major financial institutions and for the time being, alleviated the fear of another round of credit crunch.
China, on the other hand, lowered the bank reserve requirement ratio by 50bps for the first time since 2008. Despite their battle for inflation and asset bubble, they are concerned that a downfall of the Europe, one of its major trading partners, will have a drag on its economy.
So the fact that banks around the globe now should have an easier time of tapping short-term funding in the credit markets is encouraging. But this might not be the long sought after magic bullet solution. If the issue is one of solvency and not of liquidity, we are merely kicking the proverbial debt can a little further down the road before we will have to pick it up one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment