Before the crisis almost all leading central banks operated through the short-term (usually overnight) money-market rate.

危机前，几乎所有主要国家的央行都通过短期（一般是隔夜）货币市场利率来运行。

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The rate that big Banks charge each other for short-term money jumped to three times the level in June, and the cost of protecting against their default broke records.

大型银行间短期拆借利率已经变为六月份水平的三倍，而且防止其违约的成本已经打破了记录。

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Banks raise most of their money through short-term household deposits on which they pay an interest rate of just 0.7 percent. They lend at rates of 6 percent or more.

银行通过家庭的短期存款筹集大部分资金，通常只需要付0.7%的年息，但贷款利息是6%或更多。

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Commercial paper, which enabled companies to raise short-term money at a cheaper rate by bypassing banks, proliferated in the 1960s.

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Mortgage REITs borrow short-term or adjustable-rate money (the federal funds rate has plunged from 6.5% in January to 3.5% today) and use it to buy longer-term mortgages or mortgage-backed securities, playing the spread between the two sets of interest rates.

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Banks, as Mr Smithers points out, essentially take two risks: credit risk the risk that a borrower won't pay the money back and what is succinctly dubbed maturity-transformation risk taking in short-term deposits and lending the money out for a longer term at a higher rate of interest to companies or the government (by buying government bonds).

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