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Central banks in the United States, Europe, Britain and Japan announced an agreement on Monday that could provide some $287 billion in liquidity to the Federal Reserve, in the form of currency swaps. Under the arrangement, the Fed could draw on these lines to provide more liquidity to financial institutions, this time in the form of foreign currency. The announcement was the latest in a series of coordinated efforts between the Federal Reserve and other central banks to try to unlock credit markets, restore normal lending and raise confidence in the financial system. “Should the need arise, euro, yen, sterling...

Foreign central banks aren’t going to finance much of the 2009 US fiscal deficit; their reserves aren’t growing any more (the q4 2008 COFER data) Posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009By bsetserThe latest COFER data doesn’t show much change in the dollar’s share of global reserves: the dollar accounted for 64% of the reserves of countries that report data to the IMF at the end of 2008, exactly the same share as at the end of 2007. The dollar’s share of the reserves of advanced economies rose just bit, going from 66.9% at the end of 2007 to 68.1% at...

OTTAWA -- Central bankers from the major industrialized countries have moved in lockstep to flood financial markets with cash in their battle against a decaying global economy, but they do so with little experience to draw upon, heightening the risk that this grand effort could fail. “Independent measures being taken in a contemporaneous fashion implies co-ordination,” says Michael Woolfolk, New York-based senior currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon. “There is nothing perverse or desperate about it. It is just that they are running out of monetary policy room to stimulate the economy.” Mr. Woolfolk’s analysis emerges after Mark...

Dancing on a Precipice: The Tenuous Balance in Global Finance /snip Why didn’t the total collapse in private flows lead financing for the US current account deficit to dry up? That, after all, is what happened in places like Iceland — and Ukraine. My explanation is pretty straightforward. Central banks were the main source of financing for the US deficit all along. Setting Japan aside, the big current account surplus countries were all building up their official reserves and sovereign funds — and they were the key vector providing financing to the deficit countries." --------------------------------------- The implications of this are...

Here Australia's answer to Jon Stewart, Shaun Micallef interviewing the Reserve Bank of Australia's Tony Froth (remember then Fed Chair Alan Greenspan's July 2005 comment that "the apparent froth in the housing markets appears to have interacted with evolving practices in mortgage markets") trying to get to the bottom of it.

Asian central banks cut rates By Kathrin Hille in Taipei, Tom Mitchell in Hong Kong and Song Jung-a in Seoul Published: October 9 2008 02:27 | Last updated: October 9 2008 04:16 Central banks in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong cut interest rates on Thursday in steps that closely follow America’s and Europe’s policy response to the financial crisis. In an extraordinary policy meeting Thursday morning just two weeks after its last rate cut, which had reversed course following a four-year rate raising cycle, Taiwan’s Central Bank of China lowered the benchmark discount rate to 3.25 per cent from...

For release at 2:00 a.m. EDT Central banks have been employing coordinated measures designed to address the pressures in global money markets. Most recently, central banks have acted together to inject dollars into the overnight markets. Using their reciprocal currency arrangements (swap lines) with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Swiss National Bank today are announcing the introduction of operations to provide U.S. dollar liquidity with a one-week maturity. These operations are designed to address funding pressures over quarter end. Central banks continue to work together closely and are prepared to...

Today, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank are announcing coordinated measures designed to address the continued elevated pressures in US dollar short-term funding markets. These measures, together with other actions taken in the last few days by individual central banks, are designed to improve the liquidity conditions in global financial markets. The central banks will continue to work together closely and will take appropriate steps to address the ongoing pressures. Bank of England action The Bank of England will offer...

GATA alleges that gold stored in US vaults has not been audited for some time. Further they allege the gold is being used to artificially depress the price of gold. This full page ad appeared in the WSJ today. It can be found: HERE.

(AFX UK Focus) 2008-01-22 10:29 GMT: London shares higher midmorning; rumours of emergency rate cuts by central banks Article layout: raw LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Leading shares were back in positive territory midmorning as the FTSE 100 index recovered from its opening slump as rumours circulated about possible co-ordinated emergency rate cuts by central banks. At 10.02 am, the FTSE 100 index was 45.2 points higher at 5,623.4, after opening with a 239.5 point slump to 5,338.7, while the FTSE 250 index was up 105.5 at 9,366.2. The UK blue chip index closed a massive 323.5 points, or 5.48 pct,...

As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central Bank at give-away rates for Christmas. Buckets of liquidity are being splashed over the North Atlantic banking system, so far with meagre or fleeting effects. As the credit paralysis stretches through its fifth month, a chorus of economists has begun to warn that the world's central banks are fighting the wrong war, and perhaps risk a policy error of...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks spiked higher Wednesday, with the Dow industrials up nearly 150 points, after the Federal Reserve and four other central banks moved to improve liquidity in the banking system and encourage short-term lending. The Fed is coordinating its actions, designed to add $40 billion in liquidity, with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank. See full story. 'The main problem in credit markets has not been that rates are too high, but that financial institutions have been unwilling to lend.' — Alan Skrainka, Edward Jones...

M-3 has been launched into outer space, up another $56.3 billion last week, up $92.4 billion over the past two. This is some real horsepower. Over six weeks, the meaningless figure, ahem, is up $177.8 billion. These annualized growth rates are 28.7 percent, 23.6 percent, and 15.3 percent respectively. Those are the seasonally adjusted figures. The raw, non-seasonally adjusted, figure is up $293.3 billion over the past 12 weeks, on a pace to add 1.2 trillion in money to the economy. Wow. There must be a need for this. Maybe the master Planners see a coming need to monetize our...

Dollar catching Asian flu By Alan Boyd SYDNEY - They may be telling a different story to money markets, but Asian central banks have been quietly switching their dollar holdings to regional currencies for at least three years, confirm global banking data. In a further, and so far the biggest, setback for the greenback's status as the undisputed reserve currency, Japan on Thursday said it might diversify its holdings, though monetary chiefs later sought to play down the prospect. South Korea rattled currency traders with a similar announcement late last month, followed by a similar backtrack. China, India, Thailand, Indonesia,...

Jan 28, 2003 Global: The Asymmetries of Globalization Stephen Roach (from Davos) Most of us tend to analyze globalization from rather comfortable perches -- and in relative isolation. During the five days of the annual World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland becomes a real-time laboratory of globalization. I know of no other gathering in the world -- and I’ve been to all of them -- that brings the major constituencies of globalization to the same table. Politicians, policy makers, academics, corporate leaders, artists, religious leaders, and senior representatives of most of the world’s leading NGOs (non-governmental organizations) come to Davos with...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Gold is misfiring as much as its polar opposite, the paper-lined stock market. Yet the metal's believers say gold's postponed gains will make future bullion rallies among the most powerful on record. Gold mining shares, and the metal, saw a steady flow of investor interest until early June, when bullion indexes hit their highest levels in almost three years. Reality hit hard. Gold mining shares lost 11 percent in a day earlier this week, then gained back 6 percent. Such large percentage moves usually come only once every four or five years. The good times were...