Bank of England – Page 7 – Infinite Unknown

Paul Craig Roberts On The U.S. Leadership: “They Are Criminals” – The Potential Here Is Far Worse Than The Great Depression

January 12, 2009January 12, 2009 by Infinite

Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939, in Atlanta, Georgia) is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate.

He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the “Father of Reaganomics”.

He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.

He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States. (Wikipedia)

Added: January 11, 2009
Source: YouTube

Don’t Miss:

– Willem Buiter warns of massive dollar collapse

– Peter Schiff: The Fed’s Bubble Trouble

– Peter Schiff: We are on the verge of another major crisis

– Ron Paul: ‘The Palestinians Are Virtually In Like A Concentration Camp’
(It is important what Dr. Paul has to say about the dollar, debt etc.)

– Lindsey Williams: The Dollar And The US Will Collapse; Saudi Arabia And Dubai Will Fall; US Will Be Third World Country; The Greatest Depression Is Coming

– Peter Schiff: US Dollar is on the verge of collapse; This is hyperinflation; This is Zimbabwe (12/17/2008)

– Gerald Celente: The Coming Revolt

– The US Government is Going to Default

– China Losing Taste for Debt From the U.S.

Reform plan raises fears of Bank secrecy

January 11, 2009 by Infinite

The Bank of England will be able to print extra money without having legally to declare it under new plans which will heighten fears that the Government will secretly pump extra cash into the economy.

The Bank of England will be able to print extra money

The Government is set to throw out the 165-year old law that obliges the Bank to publish a weekly account of its balance sheet – a move that will allow it theoretically to embark covertly on so-called quantitative easing. The Banking Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament, abolishes a key section of the law laid down by Robert Peel’s Government in 1844 which originally granted the Bank the sole right to print UK money.

The ostensible reason for the reform, which means the Bank will not have to print details of its own accounts and the amount of notes and coins flowing through the UK economy, is to allow the Bank more power to overhaul troubled financial institutions in the future, under its Special Resolution Authority.

However, some have warned that it means: “there is nothing to stop an unreported and unmonitored flooding of the money market by the undisciplined use of the printing presses.”

It comes after the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee cut interest rates by half a percentage point, leaving them at the lowest level since the bank’s foundation in 1694.

With the Bank rate now at 1.5pc, most economists suspect the Government and Bank will soon be forced to start quantitative easing – directly increasing the quantity of money in the economy – in a drastic attempt to prevent a recession of unprecedented depth.

Quantitative easing means pure inflation.

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” – John Maynard Keynes

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” – Alan Greenspan

Although the amount of easing is likely to be limited, news of this increased secrecy will spark comparisons with Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, where uncontrolled use of the central banks’ printing presses ultimately caused hyperinflation.

Bank of England cuts interest rates to lowest in more than 300 years

January 8, 2009 by Infinite

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to the lowest level in its 315-year history as it desperately attempts to prevent the UK recession deepening into a slump.

The bank rate has been reduced by 0.5 percentage points to 1.5pc after recent economic data suggested that the UK is in store for a deep recession this year as the house price slide, unemployment rises and spending slows.

Related article:
– Chancellor set to print more cash as interest rates hit record low (Times)
– No plan to print money – Darling (BBC)
– Bank Of England’s Historic Cut (Forbes)

Economists believe that because the UK is experiencing a significant downturn, with banks unwilling to lend and pass on interest rates cuts in full, the Bank will reduce rates close to zero to try and ease the impact.

Chancellor Alistair Darling on brink of second bailout for banks

January 3, 2009 by Infinite

Billions may be needed as lending squeeze tightens

Alistair Darling has been forced to consider a second bailout for banks as the lending drought worsens.

The Chancellor will decide within weeks whether to pump billions more into the economy as evidence mounts that the £37 billion part-nationalisation last year has failed to keep credit flowing. Options include cash injections, offering banks cheaper state guarantees to raise money privately or buying up “toxic assets”, The Times has learnt.

The Bank of England revealed yesterday that, despite intense pressure, the banks curbed lending in the final quarter of last year and plan even tighter restrictions in the coming months. Its findings will alarm the Treasury.

The Bank is expected to take yet more aggressive action this week by cutting the base rate from its current level of 2 per cent. Doing so would reduce the cost of borrowing but have little effect on the availability of loans.

Economists warn of doom and gloom

January 2, 2009 by Infinite

The recession will be considerably longer and deeper than the Treasury has forecast, according to a majority of economists polled by the Financial Times.

Their views contrast with the Treasury and the Bank of England’s relative optimism in believing the economy will start to grow reasonably strongly in the second half of the year. Only a small minority of economists are confident that the green shoots of recovery will be visible by the end of this year.

Doom-mongerers include Michael Saunders of Citi, who says the UK is “in one of the worst recessions …. in the last 50 years”. He is joined by Simon Hayes of Barclays Capital, who says: “It will probably be the closest experience to the Great Depression since the Great Depression.”

Definitive proof that the Bank of England saw the financial crisis coming

December 31, 2008 by Infinite

Looking back in our archives this Christmas I came across a rather important article which I had half forgotten about. It dates from 2006, when the credit crisis was a mere apple in the financial system’s eye and the City was enjoying one of its biggest booms in history. The article, which can be found here, reveals that the Bank of England knew precisely what risk was posed by the dangerous build-up of debt which was brewing in the economy.

More strikingly, its Financial Stability Report from 2006 was as far as I can tell the first major institutional missive explicitly warning about the dangerous funding gap building up in the British banking system.

Pound hits all-time low against euro

December 10, 2008 by Infinite

Euros
A pound is now worth €1.1391. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA

The pound has hit a new all-time low against the euro following further warnings that the UK economy is in worse shape than expected.

Sterling fell to €1.1391 this morning and also hit a record low against a basket of other currencies.

The pound’s latest weakness came as economists warned Britain’s economy was deteriorating faster than expected and could suffer badly in 2009.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research warned today that the UK’s gross domestic product shrank by 1% in the three months to November, more than the official estimates.

Howard Archer, the chief European and UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said he expected to see a further “substantial contraction” in the first half of 2009 and that there was unlikely to be any growth until 2010. He is predicting a 2% drop in GDP next year.

U.K. May Expand Toolkit to Halt Recession Slide

December 10, 2008 by Infinite

The government and the Bank(sters) of England are intentionally ruining what is left of the economy and what is left of trust in the currency. Britain has become a worse credit risk than McDonald’s. The U.S. will fail and the U.K. is doing everything to follow suit. Who will pay for those billions of pounds? The government has to raise taxes or has to issue more bonds, which are nothing more than a promise to raise taxes in the future, because that money has to be paid back plus interest. Creating billions of pounds out of ‘thin air’ will further weaken the pound and will create massive inflation, which is nothing more than a ‘hidden tax’. The taxpayers will have to pay for all of it until the taxpayers will finally fail.
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The Bank of England

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — The U.K. government and central bank are considering plans to pump billions of pounds into the economy as the bank rescue package and the lowest interest rates since 1951 fail to halt a slide into recession.

The Bank of England and the Treasury are weighing a strategy known as “quantitative easing” where authorities increase money supply to boost bank reserves. The initiative was last used by Japan at the start of the decade.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government is frustrated that banks are rationing credit after tapping the Treasury for cash and guarantees to prop up their own balance sheets. Policy makers both in the U.K. and the U.S. Federal Reserve are looking beyond traditional interest-rate tools to revive the economy.

House prices fall at fastest pace in 25 years

December 5, 2008 by Infinite

British house prices tumbled at a record 16.1 per cent in November, marking the sharpest drop in property values for a quarter of a century.

Figures released this morning by Halifax revealed that prices fell 2.6 per cent in November compared with October, and are 16.1 per cent lower than in November 2007.

The year-on-year decline is deeper than falls recorded during the last recession in the early 1990s, and is the biggest drop since 1983.

Financial crisis: The banks just don’t get it – they’re lucky to be alive

November 9, 2008 by Infinite

“No, you can’t”. These are unfashionable words at the moment – and nowhere more so than in the banking industry.

While politicians were hoping for an outbreak of economic optimism after Thursday’s reduction in interest rates, our High Street bank managers were having none of it.

Nearly 24 hours after the Bank of England slashed the official price of money by a record-breaking 1.5 percentage points, only three of the 88 major lenders had said they would pass it on to their borrowers. In fact, only 30 of them had got around to sharing the proceeds of last month’s half-point rate cut. The fact they were much quicker to cut interest rates for many savers only served to rub in the message: No, you can’t have a cheaper mortgage. No, you can’t get a fairer rate on your savings. No, you can’t expect us to go without large profits and bonuses. Change is for wimps.

Well, let’s see about that. In scenes that would have been unthinkable only two months ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer summoned the industry’s leaders to Downing Street on Friday and promptly pistol-whipped them into submission. Treasury officials were said to have waved press cuttings in their faces, pointing out that the word “banker” had become a popular term of abuse – and not just in rhyming slang. Out they meekly trotted, finally ready to cut their standard variable rate on most mortgages by the same 1.5 percentage points suggested by the Bank of England.

Banks are living in a fairyland of magic money

November 9, 2008 by Infinite

HOW?WOULD?YOU?FEEL, RUNNING?A?MODEST business, if the money fairy came along and promised you would never, ever go bust? How much of a spring would it put in your step if the nice imp then said she had cast a spell guaranteeing all your lending, all your borrowing, and 98% of your customers’ cash? “Yes,” you might just say, clapping your sticky little hands, “I do believe in fairies!”

This hard-to-swallow tale has more than one happy ending. While your godmother hopes you will become a good little banker one day, she doesn’t want to be too stern. It’s not her place. So if she sprinkles some of her magic dust and shrinks the cost of money, she won’t force you to share your good luck with anyone. She’ll “urge” you instead. But only a very naughty banker would ignore that, surely?

After all, you owe the good fairy something. In fact, you owe her billions of things. They are the reasons why you are still able to frolic as a happy little banker. They also explain why you are still looking forward to big Christmas presents and the chance, some time very soon, to tell fairy godmother where to stick her advice and all those tiresome homilies on the need to be nice to poor folk.

Whatever Alistair Darling was waving at the bankers during a breakfast meeting on Friday morning, it was not a magic wand. He can urge to his heart’s content, but they intend to go on treating the Bank of England, its base rate and its monetary policy committee (MPC) as fictions only children would believe. Most may have buckled, belatedly, under an avalanche of bad publicity, but the chancellor doesn’t frighten them.

UK: Perilous state of economy revealed by MPC’s shock move

November 7, 2008 by Infinite

The perilous state of the UK economy was exposed as the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee made an unprecedented 1.5 percentage point cut in interest rates.

Winston Churchill meets the Queen in 1955. Photo: PA

The shock vote brought interest rates down to 3pc for the first time since January 1955, when Winston Churchill was prime minister. Economists forecast that the cut could pave the way for further reductions – with some claiming that rates could hit a historic low of 1pc.

Thursday’s move was interpreted as a desperate attempt to protect the UK economy from a severe recession.

“There has been a very marked deterioration in the outlook for economic activity at home and abroad,” said the MPC in an explanatory statement, adding that the threat of inflation was now receding.

It warned that after the most serious crisis in the global banking sector for almost a century, households and businesses were likely to find it difficult to obtain credit “for some time.” The MPC counted falling share prices, a sharp reduction in UK output, and a squeeze on household budgets among a nasty cocktail of circumstances that have combined to hit both businesses and consumers hard.

The MPC’s decision came amid a raft of gloomy news and data emerged. Figures from Halifax, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, showed that house prices have fallen by 15pc over the past 12 months.

It was the sharpest drop since the survey began in 1983 and brought the average house price down to £168,176 in October, compared with almost £200,000 in the same month last year.

Darling summons bank chiefs over rate cut failure

November 7, 2008 by Infinite

Alistair Darling summoned the chief executives of Britain’s biggest banks to Downing Street today to demand that they immediately pass on the Bank of England’s interest rate cut to their customers.

Treasury sources confirmed to The Times that the Chancellor told the heads of all Britain’s big high street lenders – including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS Nationwide and Abbey – to implement rate cuts immediately.

Yesterday, the Bank of England slashed interest rates by 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent, the lowest level in 54 years, and today, the shock reduction helped to ease the strain in nervous money markets.

Libor, which is the rate at which banks lend to each other and is key for pricing mortgages, fell by more than one per cent from 5.561 per cent to 4.496 per cent.

However, the figure remains almost 1.5 per cent higher than the official interest rate.

The spread between the Bank of England’s borrowing cost and the rate that banks charge to borrow money over a three-month period – a key measure in the wholesale money market – is the widest since October 22. The day before, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, publicly acknowledged for the first time that a recession in the UK is now likely.

Wall Street halts futures trading amid panic

October 26, 2008October 26, 2008 by Infinite

Stock markets across the world cracked yesterday, forcing Wall Street to suspend trading on a key futures contract to stem panic-selling while Moscow shut for business altogether.

Sharp losses in New York, London, Europe and the Far East raised the spectre that governments may be forced to impose emergency holidays to avert a meltdown across world stock markets.

Before Wall Street opened yesterday, American regulators suspended all trading of Dow Jones futures contracts, which had plunged. Such contracts allow traders to bet on the future direction of the Dow Jones index. The plunge had triggered an automatic circuit breaker, which halts trading to prevent a market sliding into freefall.

Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University, said that his prediction earlier this week that markets would have to be shut down is already coming true.

He said: “This morning, even before the markets in the US opened, the S&P futures fell by more than their daily limit. What I said yesterday has already started.”

A forced closure of stock markets in America would respresent the first time that Washington would have shut Wall Street since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It would also have echoes of the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt shut American banks during an enforced holiday.

House prices to plummet by 35% – the biggest ever fall in Britain

October 22, 2008 by Infinite

House prices will fall a record-breaking 35 per cent by next autumn, a leading firm of economists warned yesterday.

The collapse will be the biggest fall ever seen in this country.

The claim, from the consultancy Capital Economics, will horrify homeowners who face being plunged into negative equity.

Not needed: Estate agent boards piled up in a yard in Hull

According to the forecast, around £65,000 will be wiped off the value of the average home. At the height of the property boom last year the average home was worth £186,000. By next autumn it will be worth around £120,000.

Capital Economics had originally expected house prices to drop 35 per cent by the end of 2010.

But yesterday it amended this forecast in the light of recent economic turmoil. The consultancy still expects the same fall, but squeezed into a much shorter period.

Prices are then predicted to stagnate for 18 months before a tentative recovery begins in 2011.

Ed Stansfield, property economist at Capital Economics, said: ‘The sheer speed of adjustment is causing alarm.’

The housing market has been affected by the credit crunch that has frozen the world’s financial markets

The federal reserve caused the 700 billion dollar bailout and economic crash

October 20, 2008 by Infinite

Added: Oct. 18, 2008
Source: YouTube

The federal reserve caused the 700 billion dollar bailout.

The Rothschilds and the Bank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve Banks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York.

The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J. P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn,Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference The Federal Reserve was created with no constitutional authority in 1913, the Fed prints money out of thin air and loans it to the U.S. treasury at interest.

This can only lead to one outcome: debt. Currently, the Federal Reserve is printing billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street while destroying the middle class and the dollar with inflation.

If our country wants a sound and transparent monetary system, we need to abolish the Federal Reserve.

Markets hold breath as $360bn Lehman swaps unwind

October 19, 2008 by Infinite

The $54trillion credit derivatives market faces a delicate test as $360bn worth of contracts on now-defaulted derivatives on Lehman Brothers are due to be settled on Tuesday.

Lehman Brothers' complex network of derivatives will be settled on Tuesday October 22
Lehman Brothers’ complex network of derivatives will be settled on Tuesday October 22

Due to the opacity of the market, which is one of the most complex, least regulated and least understood in the global financial system, it is still not clear how many contracts have to be settled or which institutions will take the ultimate hits once the billions of dollars worth of contracts have been unravelled.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, is expected to trigger credit default swap (CDS) protection pay-outs of about $400bn but because the contracts were sold many times through different counterparties it is not yet known who will be liable.

One commentator said: “This will be the greatest illustration of the follies of Wall Street and how unnecessarily complicated the wild off-track betting became in the past few years.”

Five years ago Warren Buffett, the iconic American investor, warned that the chaotic profusion of derivatives used by companies and hedge funds to fund financial growth were “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Bankers in the City and on Wall Street are bracing for yet another round of turbulence as the contracts are unwound.

Fed Lets Europe Central Banks Offer Unlimited Dollars, Removes Swap Limits

October 13, 2008 by Infinite

Fed Releases Flood of Dollars, Market Rates Fall

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve led an unprecedented push by central banks to flood the financial system with as many dollars as banks want, backing up government efforts to revive confidence and helping to reduce money-market rates.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank will offer European banks unlimited dollar funds with maturities of seven, 28 and 84 days at fixed interest rates against “appropriate collateral,” the Washington-based Fed said today. The Fed had capped at $380 billion the currency it would swap with the three central banks.

Global economic leaders have redoubled efforts to unfreeze credit markets and avert the worst worldwide recession in thirty years after last week’s 20 percent slide in the MSCI World Index. Policy makers from the Group of Seven nations are committed to taking “all necessary steps” to stem a market panic, and European and U.S. governments today outlined plans to avoid banks failing.

Ten people who predicted the financial meltdown

October 12, 2008 by Infinite

The financial events of recent weeks have filled many of us with shock and panic. Surely no one could have predicted that we would be in this mess? Well, actually, they did. Here are ten people who saw the financial meltdown coming…

1. Vince Cable – deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats

Here is a question Mr Cable’s posed to Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, during Treasury Questions back in November 2003: “The growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level. What action will the Chancellor take on the problem of consumer debt?”

Mr Brown did not answer how he would solve the problem, merely replying that: “We have been right about the prospects for growth in the British economy, and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cable) has been wrong.”

2. Christopher Wood – chief strategist of CLSA, a broking firm in the Asia-Pacific Market.

In October 2005 Mr Wood wisely declared: “Investors should sell all exposure to the American mortgage securities market.” In an interview in 2007, he said: “Some institutions have been behaving like leveraged speculators rather than banks… The UK economy is heading for a sharp shock. It just remains to be seen how bad.”

3. Founders of www.stock-market-crash.net – website aimed at investors

The writers of this site claim that predicting crashes is, in fact, easy: “One of the greatest myths of all time is that market crashes are random, unpredictable events. The lead up to a market crash is often years in the making. Certain warning signs exist, which characterize the end of a bull market and the start of a bear market. By learning these common warning signs, you can liquidate your investments and prosper by shorting the market.”

UK: Government to save HBOS and RBS

October 12, 2008 by Infinite

Government set to become biggest shareholder in top banks as Japanese weigh bid for Morgan Stanley

THE government will launch the biggest rescue of Britain’s high-street banks tomorrow when the UK’s four biggest institutions ask for a £35 billion financial lifeline.

The unprecedented move will make the government the biggest shareholder in at least two banks.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which has seen its market value fall to below £12 billion, is to ask ministers to underwrite a £15 billion cash call.

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), Britain’s biggest provider of mortgages, is seeking up to £10 billion.

Lloyds TSB, which is in the process of acquiring HBOS in a rescue merger, wants £7 billion, while Barclays needs £3 billion.

The scale of the fundraising could lead to trading at the London stock market being suspended. This would give time for the market to digest the impact of the moves.

Brown and Darling commit £500 billion for bank bailout

October 8, 2008 by Infinite

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling set out a radical £500 billion package today to restore confidence in the UK banking sector and break the crippling logjam in credit markets.

The three-part package includes committing up to £50 billion of taxpayer funds for a partial nationalisation of stricken banks, met from increased public borrowing and with political strings attached that would include reining in executive pay.

In addition, the Bank of England will pump at least £200 billion into the money markets under its existing Special Liquidity Scheme. The Government is also making a further £250 billion available for banks over the next three years to guarantee medium-term debt to help restore confidence and get banks lending to each other again.

Fed, ECB, Central Banks Cut Rates in Coordinated Move

October 8, 2008 by Infinite

A security officer stands outside of the Federal Reserve building in Washington on Sept. 16, 2008. Photographer: Jay Mallin/Bloomberg News

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and four other central banks lowered interest rates in an unprecedented coordinated effort to ease the economic effects of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed, ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Canada and Sweden’s Riksbank each cut their benchmark rates by half a percentage point. The Bank of Japan, which didn’t participate in the move, said it supported the action. Switzerland also took part. Separately, China’s central bank lowered its key one-year lending rate by 0.27 percentage point.

Today’s decision follows a global meltdown that sent U.S. stock indexes heading for their biggest annual decline since 1937; Japan’s benchmark today had the worst drop in two decades. Policy makers are also aiming to unfreeze credit markets after the premium on the three-month London interbank offered rate over the Fed’s main rate doubled in two weeks to a record.

Bank shares plunge again in panicky trading

October 25, 2008October 7, 2008 by Infinite

Shares in Britain’s banks plunged again amid panicky trading following emergency talks with the government over a possible injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the banking sector.

Royal Bank of Scotland nosedived by almost 40% to 90p in morning trading – its lowest point since the recession of the early 1990s. Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS were also hit, as the lack of a coordinated rescue plan for the banking sector alarmed the City.

By 3pm RBS shares were 32.5% lower at 112p, giving it a market capitalisation of £15.98bn – down from over £75bn a year ago.

HBOS was 23% lower at 124p and Lloyds TSB had lost 13% to 225p. Barclays had recovered most of its early losses following Varley’s comments this morning.

Last night Britain’s bank bosses met with chancellor Alistair Darling, to discuss a possible £50bn injection of equity. They are due to meet again at the Treasury this afternoon.

The talks centre on the idea of a part-nationalisation of the banking system through the injection of capital into the banks via preference shares, which take precedence over ordinary shares during a liquidation, but do not give the holders any voting rights.

Financial crisis: Mortgage lending plunges 95 per cent as housing market suffers

September 29, 2008 by Infinite

The value of mortgages lent to British homebuyers fell 95 per cent last month, according to the Bank of England.

Mortgage approvals hit a record low after banks tightened lending Photo: PA

It said mortgage lending dived to just £143 million during August – its lowest since this data was first collected in April 1993 and a fraction of the £2.998 billion lent in July.

The bank also revealed that mortgage approvals fell to 32,000 last month from 33,000 in July.

While marginally higher than analyst forecasts, it was the lowest since data began being collected and means approvals are running at less than a third of their 109,000 total in August 2007.

Fed Pumps Further $630 Billion Into Financial System

September 29, 2008 by Infinite

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks to $620 billion from $290 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed’s emergency loan program, will expand to $450 billion from $150 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed’s expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, comes as Congress prepares to vote on a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.