Six major central banks have come together to boost the flow of U.S. dollars worldwide, as financial markets digest a tumultuous few weeks for the global banking sector.
The Federal Reserve and five other central banks—the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, and the Swiss National Bank—announced on Sunday that they would work together to increase the availability of U.S. dollar funding throughout the global financial system.
The move comes as banks on both sides of the Atlantic have come under pressure in recent weeks, with central banks looking to calm concerns about the state of the banking system.
In the U.S., the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank—and the subsequent intervention of regulators to protect depositors’ funds—prompted a selloff of global banking stocks, with questions lingering around the strength of the American banking sector.
Meanwhile, Swiss lender UBS announced over the weekend that it had agreed to buy troubled rival Credit Suisse in a landmark government-backed deal aimed at assuaging fears around the stability of global banks.
The news of the merger did not land well with investors, however, with banking stocks in Asia and Europe edging downward on Monday while oil prices and U.S. futures also traded in negative territory.
Credit Suisse shares were almost 60% lower by 7:45 a.m. New York time, paring some of their losses from earlier in Monday’s trading session.
How will greater U.S. dollar availability help?
In an announcement on Sunday, central banks said more liquidity would be provided via existing “swap lines.”
Swap lines are agreements between two central banks to exchange currencies. In this case, they are designed to improve global liquidity by giving central banks outside of the U.S. the capacity to deliver U.S. dollar funding to banks within their respective jurisdictions.
The system ultimately allows commercial banks to borrow U.S. dollars directly from their country’s central bank—which in turn borrows from the Fed—rather than on the open market.
The Fed and the Bank of England describe the swap lines as “an important liquidity backstop to ease strains in global funding markets.”
Ordinarily, the swap lines offer U.S. dollar operations on a weekly basis.
The coordinated action announced on Sunday, however, will see banks able to access the dollar funding on a daily basis, with the changes coming into effect on Monday and running until at least the end of April.
“To improve the swap lines’ effectiveness in providing U.S. dollar funding, the central banks currently offering U.S. dollar operations have agreed to increase the frequency of seven-day maturity operations from weekly to daily,” the Fed said in a statement on Sunday.
Central banks say that by using swap lines to improve cash flow and mitigate stress in global markets, potential squeezes on the supply of credit to households and businesses can be minimized.
Doubts
Cameron Parry, CEO of gold bullion savings app TallyMoney, told Fortune on Monday that the chaos in the conventional banking system had prompted a surge in interest in gold, which is regarded as a safe haven asset—and that he was skeptical about the depth of impact the changes to central banking swap lines would have on investor concerns.
Last week, TallyMoney saw new account openings jump 48% from the previous week, Parry said, with the average deposit jumping 55% above the level it was at the beginning of March.
“The 2008 financial crisis left a legacy of deep public distrust of the big banks—a broken trust that has never healed and is now exposed once more by the returning threat of contagion and bank bailouts,” Parry said.
“Six of the world’s biggest central banks are now pumping money into the financial plumbing that links the global banking system. While this should stave off the immediate risk of a banking crisis, it will do little to restore savers’ confidence in the fragile banking system itself.”
