Chinese Interbank Lending Freezes, Forcing Massive Intervention By China’s Central Bank

China is finding itself in an increasingly more untenable situation, trapped on one hand by its sliding currency (and declining reserves), which as noted earlier it has manipulated higher by forcing noted earlier  punishing”speculators” and other shorts…

 

… and on the other, by a banking sector that finds itself desperately in need of liquidity, unable to endure the PBOC’s monetary interventions, and on the verge of a liquidity crisis comparable to what Chinese banks suffered in the summer of 2013 when overnight rates briefly shot up above 20% as China pushed aggressively with a failed deleveraging campaign.

All this came to a head late last week when as Caixin reported late on Thursday, interbank lending froze on Thursday after many commercial banks suspended interbank operations amid tight liquidity conditions. Caixin adds that major institutions such as securities firms and fund managers, suddenly found themselves in a liquidity vacuum after banks, including the big four state-owned banks, became reluctant to make loans.

The magazine added that liquidity had become a major factor affecting the market after the central bank increased the cost of capital through open market operations in the past month, something we highlights three weeks ago in “The Market’s Next Headache: China’s (Not So) Stealth Tightening.”

The latest liquidity freeze forced China’s central bank to immediately extend hundreds of billions of yuan in emergency loans to financial firms on Friday and “ordered” some of the country’s biggest lenders to extend credit as well, as it moved to ease a liquidity crunch and continuing debt selloff. 

On Friday, the PBOC tapped an emergency lending facility it created in 2014 to extend 394 billion yuan ($56.7 billion) in six-month and one-year loans to 19 banks. That pushes the net amount extended through the facility to 721.5 billion yuan so far in December, a monthly record, according to Beijing-based research firm NSBO. The central bank also injected a net 45 billion yuan into the money market on Friday, following a net 145 billion yuan cash infusion on Thursday.