Credit Crunch? What Credit Crunch?
Based on data from the St. Louis Fed, Total Consumer Credit Outstanding reached an all-time high of $2.572 trillion in July (see chart above). The way the banking system is described in the media, you'd think the supply of commercial bank credit has completely dried up, e.g. do a Google News search for "credit crunch" and you get almost 45,000 results. At least for consumer credit, and at least through July, the supply of consumer credit has never been higher.
3 Comments:
"At least for consumer credit, and at least through July, the supply of consumer credit has never been higher."
This at a time when consumers should be getting out of debt, not taking on more.
It's more than consumer credit, it's commercial and industrial credit too:
"Commercial and industrial loans of all commercial banks, which are reported monthly, have grown rapidly. The most recent report, for August 2008, shows outstanding loans of $1,514 billion, an all-time high. This loan volume is 15.5 percent greater than it was a year earlier, and 30.8 percent greater than it was two years earlier."
See chart from St. Louis Fed here
I also have to wonder, if credit is drying up so much as the media hypes it...then why have I received 0% interest promos from 3 separate Credit Card companies within the last 3 weeks?
a contrasting view from Northern Trust:
Bank Credit 13 Wk Change
http://web-xp2a-pws.ntrs.com/content//media/attachment/data/econ_research/0809/document/dd092308.pdf
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