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SMH - Bank rates surge despite RBA intervention
September 5, 2007 - 11:11AM
Australia's central bank provided the banking system with more money than its estimated need today, but was unable to restrain a surge in bank bill rates as credit dried up.
In its regular daily money market operation, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) added a total $2.803 billion in cash. That was above the market's estimated cash need of $2.54 billion, implying that commercial banks' cash balances with the central bank would expand somewhat.
The RBA has been generous with its liquidity in the last few weeks as a near seizure in some markets, particularly for commercial paper, has put upward pressure on money market rates.
Widespread risk aversion has seen easy money dry up with remarkable speed while many banks have been forced to bring billions of dollars of assets back on balance sheets.
As a result three-month Australian bank bill rates have zoomed higher to top 7.0 percent today, peaks not seen in over a decade.
That was up from around 6.62 percent this time last month and alarmingly far above the RBA's 6.5 percent cash rate.
Bill rates have on average been around 19 basis points above cash in the last 18 months, so a spread of over 50 basis points was highly unusual.
The RBA has tried to ease the pressure by lending at rates well below that in the market. On Wednesday, it lent $598 million for 83 days at a rate of just 6.667 percent, well below the market's three-month rate.
Yet term rates have kept rising and rising.
"Central banks are finding they have less control of interbank rates than they once believed," said Rory Robertson, interest rate strategist at Macquarie Bank.
"To the extent that rates punching above 7 percent are a sign of financial stress, it may be making the RBA uneasy," he added. "If rates keep rising like this, to levels above what the RBA thinks appropriate, it may have no choice but to actually cut the cash rate."
Last week, RBA Deputy Governor Ric Battellino said the central bank stood ready to add more liquidity as needed, noting some market interest rates were still higher than usual.
RBA Governor Glenn Stevens last month said that should credit spreads widen, it would have to take that into account when considering monetary policy. Yet he played down any chance of the central bank actually easing policy.
The central bank held its monthly policy meeting on Tuesday and, as expected, left interest rates unchanged. It was only a month ago that it raised rates to a decade high of 6.5 percent in an attempt to restrain an unwelcome acceleration in inflation. |
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