Euro Crisis Makes Fed Lender of Only Resort as Funding Ebbs
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The Federal Reserve, chastised by Congress for lending money to foreign institutions including a Libyan-owned bank, is once again the lender of last resort for banks around the world it knows little about.
Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., money-market borrowing rates for dollars are rising, leading the Fed and European Central Bank to make the currency available to Europe’s institutions for as many as three months. U.S. prime money-market funds cut their exposure to euro-zone bank deposits and commercial paper, or short-term IOUs, to $214 billion in August from $391 billion at the end of last year, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. data.