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Bank of England Helicopters Inject Massive Liquidity into Barclays Bank
he Bank of England's emergency window this month, Barclays managers put out the unbelievable story that they don't have any financial difficulties, but only borrowed such a huge amount of money at a "penalty" short-term interest rate of 6.75%, to handle a "technical breakdown in the system used to clear and settle money-market transactions" on August 29.Barclays then announced today that it had just injected $1.6 billion into the Cairn Capital hedge fund which it had helped set up, an amount which just happened to be half the amount borrowed from the Bank of England. Barclay's bailout kept the fund from launching a "fire sale" of its assets. Cairn is one of four exotic financing funds, called SIV-Lites, created by Barclays, which until this month merrily sold short-term commercial paper backed by worthless mortgages and car loans. Two of the four have already collapsed, and are selling their assets at a loss, and a third is about to follow suit. The Bank of England helped Barclays "save" one.