Five central banks have acted to offer three-month US dollar loans to mainly European commercial banks in order to prevent money markets from freezing up because of the continent's sovereign debt crisis.<br /><br />The European Central Bank said on Thursday that it would hold three fixed-rate operations between October and December to offer banks as many dollars as they needed, in order to ease any funding crunch in the year-end period.<br /><br />The ECB said it was acting in co-ordination with the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank.<br /><br />The announcement sharply boosted the euro and European bank shares, with France's BNP Paribas jumping as much as 22 per cent.<br /><br />Asian markets were up in early trade on Friday on the back of the news as well, with Tokyo's Nikkei-225 up 2.04 per cent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng up 2.14 per cent at 04:35 GMT.<br /><br />Jane Foley, Rabobank's senior foreign exchange strategist, tells Al Jazeera the moves are not a solution to the crisis, but a treatment.
