Banks in Europe still don;t trust each other.
Lowest Libor Hides ‘Exceptionally Wide’ Bank Spreads

May 26 (Bloomberg) — The drop in the London interbank offered rate, the benchmark for $360 trillion of financial products, to a record low masks a growing gap between the rates that the biggest banks charge each other for credit.

The difference between the highest and lowest interest rates banks say they pay for three-month dollar-denominated loans is near the widest this year, according to data compiled by the British Bankers’ Association. The spread signals that lenders still lack confidence in each other, even though measures ranging from the so-called Libor-OIS spread to corporate bond sales show credit markets have recovered from the freeze caused by the Sept. 15 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

“It’s premature to judge that the credit meltdown is fully over,” said Kazuto Uchida, chief economist in Tokyo at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., a unit of Japan’s largest bank. “Banks remain wary of extending credit to each other due to strenuous concerns about counterparty risk.”

That last line means the banks don’t trust each other farther than you can throw your car.