NEW YORK: For the first time in more than a decade, the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced on Tuesday it was pumping billions of dollars into financial markets to keep short-term interest rates in line with the Federal Reserve's target range.
The New York fed authorised US$75 billion in repurchase agreements - known as"repos" - in an effort to keep the Fed's benchmark lending rate"within the target range of 2 to 2-1/4 per cent." Bids in the short-term financing markets on Tuesday hit as high as five per cent, well above the current 2-1/4 percent upper bound of the Fed's target range, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing traders.Kathy Bostjancic, Oxford Economics' chief US financial economist, told AFP earlier Tuesday there had been a"tsunami" of technical factors driving the demand for funds and pushing rates out of whack but the big injection helped.