The US Federal Reserve has lent US banks nearly US$12 billion under a new one-year lending program unveiled on Sunday, as authorities moved to ease stress on the financial system after Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse.
The total outstanding amount of all advances under the Bank Term Funding Program reached US$11.9 billion as of Wednesday, the Fed said in a statement on Thursday.
The Fed had unveiled the scheme alongside the US Department of the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp on Sunday night, as authorities looked to prevent other banks from running into the liquidity issues that ultimately doomed California’s SVB.
Photo: Reuters
The new liquidity facility made additional funding available “to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors,” the statement read.
According to data made available on Thursday, the Fed drew an additional US$152 billion in short-term borrowing for banks from its standing loan window, the traditional liquidity backstop for lenders, a dramatic increase against the roughly US$5 billion from the previous week.
And with the seizure of failed SVB and Signature Bank — a second regional-size lender that collapsed at the weekend — an additional US$142.8 billion was poured into the bridge banks created by regulators for the two collapsed entities, pushing the Fed’s balance sheet up by about US$300 billion in the past week.
US authorities moved swiftly to protect depositors at SVB and Signature Bank, as they saw “serious risk of contagion” that could have triggered runs on many banks, US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen told US senators on Thursday.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last