本日の日経平均は、2003年12月以来約５年ぶりに前場で1万円割れとなり、また月曜日のニューヨーク株式市場でもダウ工業株平均は2004年10月以来４年ぶりに1万ドル割れになった。アメリカでは、先週70兆ドル規模の資金供給を骨子とする金融安定化法が成立し、欧州主要国でも市場の信頼回復措置が相次いで発表されたが、市場の信頼は一向に回復されないという内容のWall Street Journal紙の記事。青字部分は、「欧州市株式場では圧倒的な不信任票が投じられ、ほぼ20年来の大幅な下げを記録した」という意味。
The global financial crisis has taken a perilous turn: As government efforts to tame it grow more aggressive, markets are becoming less confident those efforts will succeed.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve and European governments stepped up relief efforts, above and beyond the $700 billion rescue package approved by the Congress last week. But markets around the world responded with a massive vote of no confidence. European stocks saw their biggest drop in at least 20 years, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below the 10000 mark, a stark sign that the crisis may be outpacing policy makers' ability to contain it.
The deepening malaise illustrates how the financial crisis has moved far beyond U.S. subprime-mortgage troubles to a much more fundamental problem of confidence. The best efforts of U.S. and European officials haven't solved the central lack of trust: Nobody knows which firms will go under, making almost everybody afraid to lend.
In a further blow to confidence, Bank of America Corp., considered one of the pillars of the U.S. banking system, announced late Monday a surprise dividend cut and plans to raise capital. Only three weeks ago, the bank struck a deal to buy financial firm Merrill Lynch & Co., a move regarded as a sign of strength. On Monday, Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis said, "These are the most difficult times for financial institutions that I have experienced in my 39 years in banking."
The problem has become so severe that it's affecting not only banks, but regular companies, which are finding it more difficult to borrow money for everyday activities such as paying workers and buying supplies. If sustained, the freeze in short-term-lending markets will weigh heavily on the weakening global economy. Investors are now coming to recognize this harsh reality. Citigroup Inc. "And you need it pretty quickly."
"In order to shore up confidence in the system -- andystem, I mean the money markets -- you need something bigger, and you need something that is pretty consistent across countries," says Hans Lorenzen, credit strategist in London for
The Fed, 12 months into a sometimes makeshift campaign that is rewriting textbooks on central banking, unveiled more measures Monday to unblock the stoppage that has plagued short-term-lending markets for the past few weeks. It said it will begin paying interest on the reserves that banks leave on deposit with the central bank, a key addition to its playbook. The move will make it easier for the Fed to manage interest rates while it floods a damaged financial system with loans that nobody in the private sector will make.
U.S. officials are also examining ways to ease deepening strains in the commercial-paper market, a crucial source of short-term loans for banks and other companies in the U.S. and Europe. Interest-rate cuts by the Fed look increasingly likely to follow.
On Monday evening, U.K. officials were in talks with bank executives about possible emergency injections of capital from the government, a person familiar with the matter said. U.K. Treasury chief Alistair Darling didn't offer a specific plan.
As the credit crisis becomes more of a global problem, coordinated action on interest rates could become more appealing to policy makers. Such moves could be on the agenda when global financial officials gather this weekend in Washington as part of annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
"Coordination is of the essence," said Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the IMF, in an interview ahead of the meetings.
European Union countries made a renewed effort Monday to coordinate their response to the crisis, after a series of unilateral moves by European nations failed to have the desired effect. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, read out on television a common statement by the 27 EU nations that each "will adopt all the necessary measures to protect the stability of the financial system."
The declarations followed the surprise move on Sunday by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe's biggest economy, to guarantee all residents' bank accounts, only a day after she had criticized a similar move by Ireland. On Monday, Austria, Sweden and Denmark joined the growing list of countries that have improved their deposit-guarantee programs.
All the activity has done little to ease strains in lending markets, which have deteriorated rapidly since last month's collapse of U.S. securities firm Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Lehman's bankruptcy filing sent shock waves throughout global markets, precipitating losses even for U.S. money-market investment funds, which were supposed to be as safe as cash. In one worrying sign, the U.S. commercial-paper market shrank by a record $94.9 billion during the week ended Oct 1, to $1.61 trillion in debt outstanding, according to the Fed. That followed a $61 billion decline the week before. Most of the recent contractions were in commercial paper tied to financial companies in the U.S. and overseas.
On Monday, the Fed took steps to try to get the money flowing again. In addition to paying interest on bank reserves, the Fed said it would aggressively expand its lending to needy banks through a special auction program, with plans to make $900 billion in cash available by year end, compared with the $150 billion planned just two weeks ago.
The Fed's latest moves add to a litany of aggressive actions U.S. policy makers have taken in the past year to address the spiraling crisis, including the recent $700 billion rescue package. Since last September, the Fed has pulled aggressively on its traditional lever, adjusting interest rates, reducing the short-term federal-funds rate to 2% from 5.25% over just a few months.
It has also undertaken a steady stream of unorthodox measures: backstopping money-market mutual funds, creating new borrowing facilities for investment banks, taking on troubled assets from Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc., to name a few. In the process, its own balance sheet has been radically transformed. Once a bland storehouse for Treasury securities, the Fed's coffers are now filled with loans to a wobbly financial system, often backed by collateral few other financial institutions want to hold.
Three factors, however, have made it difficult to accomplish the mission of keeping credit flowing. First, banks and investors are pushing to pare back their debt, a process known as deleveraging. The Fed can slow that process, but it can't stop it.
Second, the financial innovations of recent years -- once thought to be a good thing, because they spread risk -- become a curse. That's because they obscure where risk is held, exacerbating uncertainty over which financial institutions will survive.
Third, the failure of Lehman and other financial institutions has so damaged confidence that even grand rescue plans are proving unable to restore it.
Fed officials show no signs of stopping their aggressive efforts to fight the crisis.
In Europe, some governments have gone much further than the U.S. in their efforts to alleviate the pain. Ireland, for example, has issued a blanket guarantee covering virtually all the debts of its six largest banks.
But coming up with a pan-European plan is proving difficult, in large part because any large-scale bailout would require the approval of many countries. While the European Central Bank oversees monetary policy for the 15 countries that share the euro currency, it cannot step in to provide a lifeline to individual banks. Within the euro zone, such emergency assistance is the province of national central banks, typically working together with governments.
An effort at common action on Saturday, before the latest round of shocks, largely failed. Germany and the U.K. rejected Mr. Sarkozy's suggestion of a common bailout fund for European banks akin to the U.S.'s $700 billion rescue plan, unhappy at the idea of sinking taxpayer money into a fund they can't control.
"Europe's economic integration is rather deep, and the inter-bank market is an integrated Europe market," says Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, a Brussels think tank. "But national politicians haven't understood that yet, and they're acting as if banks still had a nationality, so that some banks are their children and others are not."
Alessandro Profumo, chief executive of Italian bank UniCredit, says he hopes for a "European solution." He contends that "the country-by-country solution doesn't work at all because now the financial system is really a system which is completely interconnected."
On Sunday, UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank in terms of market value, announced plans to raise €6.6 billion to shore up its finances, and a dividend cut. In an interview, Mr. Profumo conceded that his bank had misjudged the scope of the credit crisis.
Problems may be particularly acute in Europe because banks there are more dependent on the short-term-lending markets than are banks in the U.S. and Asia. They've shown a particular hunger for dollar loans, which they used to finance dollar-denominated investments, such as U.S. mortgage securities. European banks steadily increased their dollar borrowings, reaching a total of about $800 billion at the end of last year, compared with $500 billion in 2003, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
Simon Adamson, an analyst at debt-research firm CreditSights, notes that a heavy reliance on short-term-lending markets, rather than regular customer deposits, is common among European banks that have run into trouble in recent weeks. "It is mainly when this feature is found in combination with other perceived weaknesses that confidence evaporates," he says.
The difficulties encountered by Germany's Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, one of the region's biggest lenders, underscore how fast things can unravel -- and how the world's interconnected financial markets are amplifying the problems. Over the weekend, the German government and financial firms agreed to a €15 billion bailout package on top of a previously arranged €30 billion rescue plan.
Hypo's troubles started last month, when Lehman's bankruptcy filing caused short-term lending markets to freeze. Within a day, a benchmark bank borrowing rate known as the London interbank offered rate saw its sharpest increase on record.
Caught up in the lending freeze was Depfa Bank PLC, a little-known Dublin banking unit of Hypo. Until this month, Depfa had been highly dependent on loans from other banks. When the market for lending among banks froze up, Depfa's access to funding came to a halt. "That market has dried out," Hypo spokesman Hans Obermeier said.
＜10月３日のダウ工業株平均推移（出典：ヤフーファイナンス）＞
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