LONDON - The latest wave of the seven-month old global credit crisis intensified on Monday as interbank lending rates climbed again in Europe and Asia and the world’s top central bankers said they were on high alert.

The US Federal Reserve’s decision on Friday to pump an additional $200 billion into the US banking system helped ease the stress in dollar borrowing, but bank-to-bank lending rates in euros climbed to their highest in almost two months.

The rise in euro rates — the third such wave since last August and a reflection of banks both hoarding cash and being unwilling to lend to each other — has seen three-month London Interbank Offered Rates jump almost a fifth of a percentage point so far this month.

European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet, speaking in his capacity as chairman of the Global Economy Meeting of the world’s top central bankers, said significant market disruption and volatility were persisting.

"The alertness of central banks was very important, as always but of course also in present circumstances," Trichet told a press briefing after the meeting at the Bank for International Settlements. "We are in close contact."

Signs that strapped banks are cutting back loans everywhere has sent fresh shockwaves through debt markets around the globe this month, as their growing unwillingness to use scarce capital to broker markets has prompted seizures everywhere from US municipal bonds to euro zone government debt.

Credit and bond market liquidity — the ability to find a tradable price for securities — is drying up and many mutual bond funds that are facing heavy redemptions are loading up on precautionary cash instead, analysts said.

Banks’ rationing of capital — the result of six months of balance sheet hits from writedowns of US subprime mortgages and related securities — has also hit their willingness to extend credit to hedge funds.

This, in turn, is triggering a cycle of margin calls and forced selling across many markets, analysts said.

More bank losses during the first quarter — following fresh turmoil in the likes of leveraged loans, commercial mortgages, municipal bonds — means banks are again struggling to preserve adequate capital ratios as quarter-end accounting looms.