The Federal Reserve on Friday injected another 38 billion dollars into the U.S. financial system and vowed to pump as much money as needed to help beat back a widening credit crisis.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added 19 billion dollars in temporary reserves Friday morning, and then injected in another16 billion dollars in reserves hours later. And in the afternoon, it pumped 3 billion dollars more.
The Fed, which also pumped 24 billion dollars into the market Thursday, said in a statement it stood ready to release more money if necessary.
"The Federal Reserve is providing liquidity to facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets," said the U.S. central bank.
"The Federal Reserve will provide reserves as necessary through open market operations to promote trading in the federal funds market at rates close to the Federal Open Market Committee's target rate of 5-1/4 percent," said the Fed statement.
"In current circumstances, depository institutions may experience unusual funding needs because of dislocations in money and credit markets," the statement said.
The Fed said that, as always, its discount window was available as a source of funding.
Meanwhile on Friday, the European Central Bank (ECB) also injected 61.05 billion euros (around 83 billion U.S. dollars) into the money market after pumping 98.4 billion euros (around 129.65 billion U.S. dollars) into the market on Thursday.
The two central banks' action comes one day after a financial panic about a credit crunch swept through Europe.
Investors believed that the central banks foresaw serious problems in the banking sector arising from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
Over the past two days, central banks in Europe, Asia and North America have pumped out more than 300 billion in an effort to ward off the widening credit crisis.