Term Auction Facility - Credit Crunch

Credit Crunch

Early in August 2007, the subprime crisis began to spread to sectors outside mortgage and real-estate finance. The ECB began distributing funds through a discount window or fine-tuning operation. By August 9, the ECB lent €95 billion ($112 billion in the days conversion) to EU banks, and the Fed distributed $12 billion through repo operations. Empirical results indicate that the Term Auction Facility had a strong effect in reducing financial strains in the inter-bank money market, primarily through relieving financial institutions' liquidity concerns.