At the same time, the amount of refinancing provided via the one-week main refinancing operations has been reduced correspondingly, so that the total amount of outstanding refinancing has remained unchanged. Given the global nature of the financial turmoil, central banks have strengthened their cooperation, first through enhanced information exchange and collective monitoring of market developments and later on by coordinated steps to provide liquidity.
Since December 2007, the ECB has, in cooperation with the US Federal Reserve and together with the Swiss National Bank, been conducting several term auction facilities – the so-called TAF-operations – to provide USD liquidity to euro area banks.