By Charles Wyplosz

The combined central bank injection of liquidity last week was impressive. Still, more than five months after the interbank market froze, banks’ thirst for cash seems unquenchable. The central banks have done everything they can to keep financial markets orderly. They took the risk of feeding the moral hazard beast and what did they achieve? So far they have avoided the much-feared “Big Crunch”, but the end of the tunnel is not yet in sight. The time has come to ask the harder question: do commercial banks get it?

The big commercial banks hold mountains of cash, probably because they still have mountains of sickly off-balance-sheet liabilities that they are unwilling to acknowledge. Or it is because they fear that other banks are in that position and that this could trigger the Big Crunch. Or they just think that other banks think that way. Prudence is a much-needed virtue in banking, the more so because it has been forgotten in recent years.

But the further cash injection will not provide the permanent solution: the return of interbank lending. For that to happen, banks need to be reassured about each other. Recapitalisation is the only solution. Three big banks – Citibank, UBS and Morgan Stanley – have shown the way in recent days. They remind us that large losses must be financed by fresh share issuance. It matters little who provides the cash. We should not let concerns about sovereign wealth funds stand in the way of a permanent solution.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.

By Kenneth Rogoff

US Federal Reserve officials were jolted last week by the cacophony of booing that greeted their quarter-percentage-point interest rate cut. Markets badly wanted double the amount. It is part of a growing town/gown rift between a model-oriented Fed and a profit-oriented financial community.

Market commentators, including some former Federal Open Market Committee members, almost unanimously expressed deep disappointment that the Fed did not seem more attuned to the growing risk of recession. The critics were especially peeved that the Fed’s statement did not contain a clear acknowledgement that short-term growth risks easily trump short-term risks to core inflation.

The negative rhetoric cooled a bit later in the week as the big central banks announced new measures to maintain market liquidity, and as high November inflation readings made the Fed’s balance of risk assessment seem somewhat more plausible.

Nevertheless, markets remain extremely sceptical. As housing prices sink and the credit crunch grinds on, top private forecasters have been scurrying to downgrade their 2008 growth estimates.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.

By Fred Bergsten

The world economy faces an acute policy dilemma that, if mishandled, could bring on the mother of all monetary crises. Many dollar holders, including central banks and sovereign wealth funds as well as private investors, clearly want to diversify into other currencies. Since foreign dollar holdings total at least $20,000bn, even a modest realisation of these desires could produce a free fall of the US currency and huge disruptions to markets and the world economy. Fears of such an outcome have risen sharply in both official circles and the markets.

However, none of the countries into whose currencies the diversification would take place want to receive these inflows. The eurozone, the UK, Canada and Australia among others believe that their exchange rates are already substantially overvalued. But China and most of the other Asian countries continue to intervene heavily to keep their currencies from rising significantly. Hence, further large shifts out of the dollar could indeed push the floating currencies far above their equilibrium levels, generating new imbalances and a possibly severe slowdown in global growth.

There is only one solution to this dilemma that would satisfy all parties: creation of a substitution account at the International Monetary Fund through which unwanted dollars could be converted into special drawing rights, the international money created initially by the fund in 1969 and of which $34bn-worth now exists. Such an account was worked out in great detail in 1978-1980 during an earlier bout of currency diversification and free fall of the dollar that closely resembled today’s circumstances.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.

By Lawrence Summers

Three months ago it was reasonable to expect that the subprime credit crisis would be a financially significant event but not one that would threaten the overall pattern of economic growth. This is still a possible outcome but no longer the preponderant probability.

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.
Several streams of data indicate how much more serious the situation is than was clear a few months ago.

First, forward-looking indicators suggest that the housing sector may be in free-fall from what felt like the basement levels of a few months ago.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our guest economists appears below.