偶看新闻农村金融现状:Central bank injections: pain killer, not cure
来源：百度文库 编辑：偶看新闻 时间：2024/04/29 19:21:07
IT'S NOT the bazooka the market was seeking, but co-ordinated action by six central banks to provide cheaper access to US dollar funding is a significant response to the crisis.
It should help to reduce pressure for banks to sell assets, helping to head off a growing credit crunch within the eurozone that had started to take its toll on the global economy.
But while the action triggered a broad market rally, it also reflects the severity of the crisis and adds to pressure on European policy makers to take decisive action.
The US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, Bank of England, Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank agreed to cut the cost of borrowing US dollars under swap lines by 0.5 percentage point.
European banks have been struggling to get hold of US dollars as US money-market funds have cut lending and the cost of swapping euro loans for US dollar loans had reached levels not seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
The easier terms — the rate for an 84-day US dollar loan from the ECB has more than halved, RBS calculates — should make banks more willing to borrow US dollars from central banks; if many banks use them, there will be less stigma attached.
The central banks also agreed to temporary bilateral swaps to offer liquidity in each of their currencies, while insisting this was precautionary: There had been no demand for such facilities.
The action is reassuring in that it shows policy makers are willing and able to co-ordinate to tackle the crisis.
But it is also disturbing since it suggests central banks fear the euro-zone crisis could go global via the banking system and affect cross-border lending more widely.
One particular area of vulnerability is trade finance, which is predominantly US dollar-denominated.
French banks, which have historically had a 25 per cent market share, are deleveraging rapidly in response to the liquidity crunch and new capital rules, with knock-on effects for global trade.
Another concern is that central banks are increasingly becoming central counter-parties as markets malfunction.
Still, markets chose to accentuate the positive. Equities rallied hard, the euro climbed more than 1 per cent against the US dollar, the cost of swapping euros for US dollars fell around 0.3 percentage point.
The central banks' action is helpful, but it only alleviates crisis symptoms.
The euro zone's deep-seated problems remain unaddressed. The market is betting this action by central banks will be followed by more decisive European efforts to support bank funding and alleviate stress in sovereign bond markets.
If so, this could be the turning point for market sentiment. If not, the central bank toolkit may need to be ransacked further, but it may be to diminishing effect.