Sky News business correspondent Joel Hills
All banks need to borrow money, usually from each other.
The ongoing credit-crunch means banks are finding the money they need to finance their day-to-day operations harder to come by.
So you'd think that the Fed's annoucnement that it was making an extra $40 billion available to address "liquidity pressures in term funding markets" would have been cause for a little cheer.
But a move presumably designed to reassure seems to have freaked the markets out.
At the time of writing the FTSE has doubled its losses from this morning (it's currently down 1.5% today and 12% so far this year).
Wall Street saw shares fall sharply yesterday and is also now forecast to open down.
Perhaps investors are reacting instead to the appalling US jobs figures just out.
We were expecting Non-Farm Payroll figures to have gone up by 25,000 last month, instead they fell by 63,000.
Talk of a recession in the US just won't go away.
Talk of recession, I believe the recession has already arrived. The markets trying to mask it is not working anymore, reality has struck!
Posted by: Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 10 Mar 2008 14:23:45
I Feel it's crucial for everyones intrest that the Markets adjust and heal themselves organicaly if bad news is feeding through the markets better to have that as a sign of progress.
Posted by: Edward London 7 Mar 2008 15:58:00