US Fed announces more measures to ease dollar crunch, liquidity strains

The Fed also announced its latest effort to reassure dealers and other financial institutions that it will provide as much liquidity as needed to keep markets functioning smoothly.

The US Federal Reserve continued to roll out emergency support on Friday as it enhanced efforts with other major central banks to ease a global dollar-funding crunch, backstopped a market essential for U.S. state and local government finances and ramped up its purchases of mortgage-backed securities.

In a coordinated move, the Fed said it would enhance the permanent U.S. dollar liquidity swap line arrangements it has with the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank to further ease dollar funding stress abroad.

The Fed said that it would increase the frequency of 7-day