FRANKFURT, GERMANY - The world's top central banks announced a huge onslaught to boost the volume of dollars available to strangled money markets on Thursday, as global financial turmoil ripped deeper into confidence.

The central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve with a cash facility of 180 billion dollars, made an extrordinary statement of joint action.

"Today, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) are announcing coordinated measures," they said.

These were "designed to address the continued elevated pressures in US dollar short-term funding markets."

These measures, "together with other actions taken in the last few days by individual central banks, are designed to improve the liquidity conditions in global financial markets," they said.

"The central banks will continue to work together closely and will take appropriate steps to address the ongoing pressures."

In New York, the US Federal Reserve announced a 180-billion-dollar cash line to fight the wildfire on global financial markets.

The Fed's Open Market Committee authorised the expansion of its temporary reciprocal currency arrangements or swap lines to fight "continued elevated pressures in US dollar short-term funding markets."

And in an indication of the long-running nature of the already 14-month-old crisis, the Fed said the "reciprocal arrangements" by the central banks would run up to January 30, 2009, or for another four and a half months.

The Fed approved increases in the existing swap lines with the ECB of up to 110 billion dollars and with the SNB of up to 27 billion dollars.

New swap facilities were also authorized with the Bank of Japan (up to 60 billion dollars), the Bank of England (up to 40 billion dollars), and the Bank of Canada (up to 10 billion dollars).

The world's central banks have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into money markets to ensure the supply of funds does not dry up after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

The US government bailout of major insurer American International Group has failed to quell worries over the global financial system, with stock markets around the world hit by a fresh round of selling.

Wild falls on stock markets and US Treasury bond yields, a surge in the price of gold, reports that investment bank Morgan Stanley is looking for help after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and uncertainty after the nationalisation of AIG insurance fuelled the crisis.