Intro Hello. I'm Bernard Hickey with the daily briefing from...(More)

Intro Hello. I'm Bernard Hickey with the daily briefing from interest.co.nz... Today, we'll look at news that ING has suspended withdrawals from two bond funds because of the global credit crunch And we'll look a bit deeper at the US Federal Reserve's surprise intervention overnight to pump liquidity into global credit markets. Will it work. Or is the Fed flogging a dead horse. Story 1, But firstly, we look at news broken on interest.co.nz that ING has suspended withdrawals from two of its bond funds because of the global credit crunch. ING has suspended withdrawals from its ING Diversified Yield fund and its ING Regular Income fund. It says it took the unusual step after 400 investors tried to pull their money out of the fund this month, a sharp increase in withdrawals. ING says its trustee took this painful decision to protect the 8,000 investors still left in the fund because such big withdrawals would have triggered sales of assets into a very weak market or one that wouldn't buy them. This will be a major shock for investors in New Zealand's second biggest fund manager. The global credit crunch is definitely coming home to roost. This has been brewing for months. The Macquarie Fortress fund has seen massive declines and ABN Amro's PINS notes have suspended interest payments. This is a very worrying development. Essentially this was a run on a bond fund. Story 2 Now for more news of central bankers trying desperately to put their finger in the dyke to stop the sub-prime credit crunch cascading into the rest of the economy. Overnight the US Federal Reserve said it would exchange US treasuries for mortgage backed securities in an effort to pump liquidity into the market and stop the credit crunch worsening. The Fed coordinated its move to pump in US$200 billion with similar moves by the Bank of Canada and European Central Bank to pump in a further US$45 billion. This shows just how worried the rest of the world's central banks are about the global credit system grinding to a halt. The are right to be worried. The implosion started with sub-prime and is now spreading out to local government bonds and debt linked to private equity deals. Over recent weeks many local governments in the United States have stopped borrowing and some are close to defaulting on their loans. Many US universities have suspended their student loan programmes because they can't borrow from markets that have seized up. Bear Stearns had to deny rumours on Monday night that it had run out of cash. But will this latest move by the Fed actually work? The big problem right now is confidence and the wave of losses cascading through the banking system. This move may help. US stock markets and the US dollar rallied. But this is the second attempt to add liquidity to the market and the Fed is widely expected to cut official interest rates again next week by up to 100 basis points to 2%. The Fed is essentially pumping money into the global economy to fix a problem that is really about poor lending practices and not some artificial lending crisis. Banks and others made bad lending decisions. They are now coming home to roost. Those losses should clear out of the system and shareholders who employed the bankers who made these decisions should lose a lot of money. Sure we don't want good banks failing because of a crisis of confidence. But sometimes the bad apples have to be cleaned out. The danger is the US Federal Reserve keeps pumping money into the system and encourages bad banks to think they can keep making bad lending decisions because the Fed will always bail them out. Many would argue that's what happened since 2001 when Fed governor Greenspan consistently ran loose monetary policy to pump up the US economy after 9/11. That generated inflation and the housing and private bubbles that are now bursting through the global economy. So what does this all mean for us. A deepening of the credit crunch will probably mean higher interest rates on fixed rate mortgages, but not necessarily higher term deposit rates. It may mean a short term drop in the New Zealand dollar as foreign investors keep their money safe at home. This morning the Kiwi dollar rose because many were relieved about the Fed's actions to apparently fix the crisis. We shall see whether it works. My bet is we're in for some more tough times. I'm Bernard Hickey from interest.co.nz with the Daily Briefing. Catch you on Tuesday.(Less)