Total loans have been contracting since early December, which is an ominous portent in our credit-based economy. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
For the first time in the US since the Financial Crisis.
Let’s forget for a moment the Fed, its rate-increase flip-flopping, and what that might do in theory to the economy, and let’s look instead at what companies are actually doing, how they’re responding to the environment they find themselves in. Because now, something is happening that we haven’t seen since the trough of the Financial Crisis.
Credit growth no matter what has been the mantra. It could never be enough. If companies borrow more from banks, they’ll use that money to invest in productive activities or equipment and grow. That’s the theory. And it would move the economy forward.
So total loans and leases at all commercial banks have soared 40% since the bottom of the Financial Crisis to $9.13 trillion in the week ending February 15, according to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and are 25% above the peak of the prior credit bubble in October 2008.
But since the week ending December 7, 2016, they have declined a smidgen. So why is that all-important loan growth flattening out after soaring for so many years? And how do companies fit into this?
Of the many categories of loans and leases, one category stands out as an indicator of what companies are doing: commercial and industrial loans.
They edged down to $2.1 trillion in the week ended February 15. That’s where they’d first stood on October 19. After ballooning relentlessly for six years straight, C&I loans have now been stalled for four months in a row.
Since the bottom of the financial crisis, there have been periods of four or five weeks of stalling C&I loans, but they were invariably followed by robust loan growth immediately afterwards. So these C&I loans have been booming over those years. But this period from October 19 until now is the first extended stretch of stalling C&I loans since the bottom of the Financial Crisis.
To continue reading: Oops, this Isn’t Supposed to Happen in a Rosy Credit Scenario
