Liquidity Injection

Said Bernanke: "I'd like to eschew
That the euro would bid us adieu,
So I'll open the taps
To help out those chaps
In the Old World as well as the New."

The Federal Reserve led an internationally coordinated effort among the leading central banks to inject US dollar liquidity into the European banking milieu. With a half-percent cut in the rate on dollar swap lines to the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, the Fed hopes that dollars would in turn be made available to those Old World financial institutions for which liquidity has dried up of late. Marketplace's Heidi N. Moore, in her Tumblr, compared the action to siphoning unleaded premium from a Hummer so that a distressed Mercedes tow truck - and the broken Ferrari behind it - can reach the nearest exit and stop endangering the other traffic. Markets reacted ecstatically, which is ironic considering the central banks' implicit acknowledgement of urgency, bordering on panic.