European stock markets slumped further on Friday following massive losses on Wall Street and Asia on mounting fears that this week’s efforts by central banks and governments to break the logjam in credit markets have failed to ease lending rates between banks.

At midday London time, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 328.03, or 7.6 percent, at 3,985.77, below the 4,000 mark earlier for the first time in five years. Germany’s DAX was 399.92, or 8.2 percent, at 4,487.08, and France’s CAC-40 was 254.03, or 7.4 percent lower at 3,188.67.

Trading has been suspended for various times in Austria, Russia, Iceland, Romania and Ukraine while Milan suspended share dealings in nearly half of its stocks because of excessive losses.

Despite the coordinated interest rate reductions announced on Wednesday, and massive liquidity boosts, the rates banks lend to each other continue to rise. This is ominous because it means banks are afraid to lend to each other, and raises the chance that they and other businesses won’t get the credit they need to operate.

The London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, for three-month borrowing in dollars has jumped another 0.07 percent to 4.82 percent, two percentage points higher than the rate just a month ago, and despite this week’s half point rate cut from the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks.

CBS2