Economic Notes for the Week of December 5th

This has been another interesting week from a news standpoint.  The ECB, Federal Reserve and other major central banks coordinated efforts to enhance the availability, extend the expiration date and lower the pricing of dollar loans through liquidity swaps—the prices of which were lowered from 1.00% to 0.50% over the applicable ‘OIS’ (or Overnight Indexed Swap rate, a type of prime rate for such instruments).  Secondly, these central bank policymakers offered temporary additional swap lines in any of their currencies/jurisdictions (other than the dollar only), should they be needed. Read more