Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Are Lending Standards Really Loosening?

Of course not, but Zero Hedge seems to think so. Here is an excerpt from the post:image

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The fallacy, of course, is that a decline in the percentage of banks tightening standards does not mean that any banks are loosening them. Think of a faucet – once you’ve shut it off, you stop tightening, right?

In fact, not a single bank in any lending category reports easing standards. Here is the data for CRE, for example:

image

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Here is a link to the survey.