China, EU and UK Attempt to Increase Economic Growth

By Charlene Cooper | Jul 05, 2012 12:14 PM EDT

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In attempts to increase their struggling economies, China and the European Central Bank decreased interest rates Thursday. This comes with the fear that the Eurozone debt crisis will continue to hinder growth within the coming months.

Additionally, the U.K. released another round of stimulus to help get its economy out of recession.

This is China's second rate cut in two months. Its benchmark's lending rates will see a drop by 31 basis points to 6 percent. Deposit rates will fall by 25 basis points to 3 percent, according to a statement posted by the People's Bank of China on its website.

The central bank previously cut interest rates on June 7, and this round of official cuts began Friday.

The Chinese central bank took further steps in decreasing interest rates by lowering lending rates to 70 percent of benchmark rates from 80 percent previously.

"The fact that China is actually cutting lending and deposit rates is a bigger deal than just reducing the reserve requirement," said David Morrison, market strategist at GFT Global, to MSNBC's Economy Watch. "But there's a great big Chinese data dump next week, so the question is whether this is a heads-up that the data will not be as good as hoped."

In continuous efforts to cut rates, the ECB brought down its deposit rate to zero from 0.25 percent.

These efforts could serve as an incentive for banks to lend to one another opposed to them giving large funds back to the ECB daily.

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