Sunday, May 13, 2012

Commercial Loan Volume Back to 2007 Levels

The chart above displays the volume of commercial and industrial loans at all U.S. commercial banks on a weekly basis back to 2000, through the first week of May, and shows that bank lending to small and medium size businesses has been steadily increasing since the fall of 2010.  Business loan volume has been above $1.4 trillion in every week since early April, which is back to the pre-recession commercial loan levels of November 2009 (see chart).  A year ago, commercial lending to businesses was growing at an annual rate of only about 3%, but since then business loan growth accelerated to double-digit levels starting last November, and now business loan growth has been about 13% since early February.

Commercial banks have been increasingly more willing to extend credit to America's small- and medium-sized companies over the last 18 months, as confidence about current and future economic conditions has been improving, leading to greater willingness by banks to take on credit risk.  It's an important economic milestone that bank business loan volume has returned to its pre-recession 2007 levels.    

9 Comments:

At 5/13/2012 2:41 PM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

"...bank lending to small and medium size businesses has been steadily increasing since the fall of 2010."

That's good news and so is...

A new channel of lending for small business has evolved, that offers a source of capital for small business: Crowd Funding.

 
At 5/13/2012 6:18 PM, Blogger Oak said...

Would be nice if they segregated by size of the loans. In the aggregate the lending still seems to be filling in for the decline in commercial paper.


Commercial Paper Outstanding


Commercial paper plus commercial and industrial loans is about flat since early 2010. However it is on a slight upward trend since early 2011.

Commercial paper is at the larger end of the spectrum, so it would be nice to see trend of the single digit millions of dollars to low double digit millions.

 
At 5/13/2012 8:54 PM, Blogger JG said...

"It's an important economic milestone that bank business loan volume has returned to its pre-recession 2007 levels."

Another post on how the economy is back to 2007 levels, as if this is good news.

To be at 2007 levels in 2012 is dreadful.

 
At 5/13/2012 9:05 PM, Blogger Jon Murphy said...

To be at 2007 levels in 2012 is dreadful.

Would you rather be at 2009 levels?

 
At 5/14/2012 6:09 AM, Blogger Ed R said...

And commercial paper outstanding is about 50% of what it was in '07 - '08.

These are not good financial stats.

 
At 5/14/2012 9:17 AM, Blogger morganovich said...

if one believes (as i do) that inflation has averaged 6% over this period, this looks a great deal less encouraging as it is 30% below 2007 in real terms.

 
At 5/14/2012 9:52 AM, Blogger Hydra said...

Whoopee, we are only about 12 years behind.

 
At 5/14/2012 7:34 PM, Blogger Marko said...

But but but . . . I thought lack of lending caused the recession in the first place? The chart doesn't show that at all. Greed! Big banks! Capitalism!

 
At 5/17/2012 7:28 AM, Blogger VangelV said...

To be at 2007 levels in 2012 is dreadful.

Would you rather be at 2009 levels?


No, but when you adjust for population and the real inflation rate the numbers are pathetic. Note that being in an election year matters. This is the time that the system has a lot of liquidity injections and lending is easiest.

 

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