The European Central Bank is lending a record amount of money to banks in the 17 nations that use the euro, in hopes of limiting the widespread effects of the governmental debt crisis.

The central bank Wednesday said it would make $638 billion in three-year loans to 523 banks, in an effort to encourage them to advance credit to businesses and consumers and buy the bonds of debt-ridden governments.

It was the biggest cash infusion into the continent's banking system in the 13-year history of the euro.

But numerous analysts said the large amount may be too little to help cash-short banks worried that some governments could default on their loans. The analysts said banks, rather than making new loans to spur the eurozone's stagnant economy or buying governmental securities, might simply add the cash to their reserves or use it to refinance their own debts.

While the cash might help the banks, analysts also said the loans showed that they are dependent on the central bank for funding, rather than other private financial institutions from which they would normally borrow money if the continent's economy were flourishing.

The European Central Bank said it would lend the money at its benchmark interest rate, currently a very low 1 percent. The central bank plans to make more loans to private banks in late February.

The total for Wednesday's loans exceeded the $578 billion figure the ECB lent banks in mid-2009 when the world financial system was reeling from the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Three eurozone nations — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — already have been forced to secure international bailouts, and Greece is negotiating terms of a second one. Now, some European leaders fear that much larger Italy and Spain could default on their loans – debts that the eurozone bloc of nations would have difficulty recovering from.

Italy reported that its economy shrunk two-tenths of one percent in the July-to-September period, an indication the country may have slipped into its fifth recession in the last decade.

Just outside the eurozone, Hungary also is faced with economic challenges. The Standard & Poor's financial services company downgraded Hungary's credit standing to junk status .

S&P said the downgrade reflected its opinion that the “predictability and credibility” of Hungarian polices continues to weaken. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has sought legislation that critics say would reduce the independence of the country's central bank.