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The stock markets have surged this morning after central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank agreed to a program that essentially makes U.S. dollars more available to European banks and to ease the global debt crisis.

The NY Times reports, "The central banks announced that they would slash by roughly half the cost of an existing program under which banks in foreign countries can borrow dollars from their own central banks, which in turn get those dollars from the Fed. The banks also said that loans will be available until February 2013, extending a previous endpoint of August 2012." A statement released by the group said, "The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity."

An economist at Nomura told Bloomberg News, "When there’s concerted action by central banks, it’s definitely good. But are liquidity injections a game changer when the heart of the problem is in European sovereign debt markets?" Earlier, China announced it would loosen its monetary policy, in order to jumpstart its economy.