By: GZ on Giovedì 09 Agosto 2007 20:26
il tasso interbancario a cui le banche si fanno prestito come dice il nome stamattina era schizzato al 5.86% in euroopa, mentre in teoria dovrebbe essere il 4.50% sulla base dei tassi che la BCE fissa
come spiega bene Tony Crescenzi questo improvviso intervento della ECB di oggi mostra che la FED e la ECB ne sanno di meno degli operatori di mercato e reagiscono nel panico all'ultimo momento
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By Tony Crescenzi
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/tcrescenziblog/10373318.html
In Europe, the interbank rate jumped sharply overnight, trading at 5.86%, the highest since 2001. This prompted the European Central Bank to lend $130 billion to European banks, which were seeking liquidity they found difficult to obtain in a market frozen by the BNP news.
In the U.S., the interbank rate, the fed funds rate, has also moved higher, although not dramatically. It's now 5.50%, a quarter point above the Fed's target. Although not high, the funds rate has traded this high fewer than 10 times over the past year.
The $130 billion injection by the ECB is extraordinary. On Sept. 12, 2001, in response to the extraordinary circumstances, the total amount of deposits at the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which captures the scale of the Fed's liquidity injections, was $102 billion, 5 times normal.
According to notes in my recently published book, the 1,200 page revision to Stigum's Money Market, the average daily size of the Fed's daily open market operations was $6.4 billion in 2005 and the size of its 14-day repos, which are announced most Thursdays, was $8.7 billion. Today the Fed conducted a $12 billion 14-day operation, responding to the jump in the fed funds rate. It can thus be said that liquidity squeeze in Europe is impacting the U.S.
As the ECB said, it will fill 100% of all requests for in order to assure orderly conditions in the money market. Hence, there will be plenty of liquidity to handle the problem no matter the scale because the ECB can print as much money as is necessary.
What stands out most from this situation is its proximity to the Federal Reserve's meeting on Tuesday. If the Fed had even the slightest inkling that a problem of this scale might occur, its statement would have had a full tilt toward neutral rather than the partial tilt it gave. Today's events show that either the Fed committed a large policy error on Tuesday, or that both the Fed and the ECB are themselves more in the dark on the problems that lie underneath the surface than are investors in the financial markets.
While the Fed and the ECB may not have the providence to see all problems that exist, it should at the very least have a greater sense about conditions in the markets it controls -- the money market and the credit markets more generally -- and of conditions in the banking system.