Thursday, August 09, 2007

Credit markets "seizing up"?

From an article on MSNBC:
Major central banks swept in to calm credit markets spooked by mounting losses on Thursday and injected cash to prevent the financial system from seizing up.The European Central Bank pumped a record 94.8 billion euros ($130.6 billion) into Europe’s money markets as banks scrambled for cash after France’s biggest listed bank, BNP Paribas, froze withdrawals from three funds. It cited U.S. subprime mortgage market problems.

This was the largest amount of money the ECB has ever injected into the markets in a single operation.
It routinely holds quick market operations when there is a cash imbalance but not since after the U.S. terror attacks in 2001 has the size neared Thursday’s level.
So much for subprime credit problems being contained to the US housing market.. Are we looking at a temporary psychological issue here, or are we looking at the start of credit market thats much tighter than the one we have today? And if credit is harder to come by and more expensive to get what does that mean for high priced real estate markets like Vancouver?

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