And in another similarity, the European Banks are heavily reliant on short-term market funding, from sources such as the U.S. money funds that are among the biggest wholesale lenders on the planet.

The biggest Banks each have hundreds of billions of dollars of such debt, including overnight loans from other Banks, short-term paper sold to money-market funds and bonds held by pension funds.

While cash was king for much of 2007, yields on instruments such as money-market accounts and certificates of deposit have dropped along with short-term interest rates.