September 12, 2007 (LPAC)--In a written report to Parliament today, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King compared the collapse of the global asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market to "a bank run," but insisted Britain's central bank is not ready to open the spigots to bail out the banks more than it already has.

King did include a large loophole to this policy at the end of the report, when he wrote: "all central banks are aware that there are circumstances in which action might be necessary to prevent a major shock to the system as a whole."

And in any case, while the Bank of England continues to limit its liquidity spigot, because there is only one globalized market, British banks and hedge funds are sucking up the liquidity being pumped out by U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of Japan, like all the others.