The Government’s massive but bold intervention to ease the banking crisis is designed to shore up confidence and to provide liquidity into the system so that banks can begin to lend again to each other, and then to consumers and businesses.
Thank god, conditions in the interbank lending market are showing the first signs of easing with the all important 3 month libor rate moving down to 6.269% from last friday’s 6.285%.
However, things will not turn rosy overnight, and I’m wondering about the short term survivalability of highly leveraged companies who literally can’t wait much longer to be rescued. These are companies who are reliant on borrowed money to stay afloat but are facing difficulties in getting refinanced.
For some, it must be an agonising wait- a bit like the cliched scene in old westerns where an injured soldier lies dying in the dust as he hears the distant but advancing sound of the cavalry bugle horn. Businesses know that help is at last on its way, but will they all survive the wait?