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’BoE charts, UK banks’ gloom
Banks are being asked to not choke off the real economy and strengthen their capital levels at the same time.
They are, however, finding it rather difficult to get funding from anywhere except central banks,
Inter-company, intra-state Chinese lending
Here’s an on-the-ground update of a Chinese practice with some Japanese origins.
It’s what China expert Michael Pettis compared to the zaiteku undertaken by Japanese companies in the 1980s. Put simply,
China’s trusts – still booming
Beijing may have cracked down on bank trust products– the unholy alliance of off-balance sheet banking and wealth management — but more traditional trusts? Those that function without banks?
They’re still going strong,
The deleveraging pain in Spain
Here’s a problem for Spain (and to a lesser extent, the US and UK) charted:
It comes from Morgan Stanley’s 125-page European banking presentation, wherein the analysts reinforce their vision for the (reshaped) future of the industry.
China’s crouching commercial paper, hidden loan targets
As western commercial paper continues to wither, the eastern stuff is on the up.
Bloomberg wrote on Friday about surging commercial paper sales in China — as companies tap the short-term paper instead of getting loans from banks:
Mortgage professionals only, please
It’s been a busy week for mortgage news, but not quite one for cheer at the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).
Readers might remember that in its latest trends in lending data the BofE said that the value of mortgage lending for house purchases was £5.3bn in October,
Quixotic QEasing
Here’s an interesting tidbit to trot out in the debate over the shape of the US recovery.
The Federal Reserve has been quick to highlight the speed and intensity of its policy movements, most notably its quantitative easing and interest rates.
Pulling the plug on China’s banks. Literally.
Here’s one way to put the brakes on China’s lending boom.
Simply pull the (electricity) plug on banks’ loan operations. From Caixin Online:
Branch loan officers for a major bank were gearing up for a new round of lending in late February when their computer screens suddenly froze.
[Darling: Budget Highlights 2010] Reforming financial services — some details
FT Alphaville finally got its hands on a nice, fat hard-copy of the UK’s 2010 Budget on Wednesday, freshly couriered over from Westminster.
We were intrigued by this section of the Budget Report, on ‘reforming financial services’ (emphasis in the original):
Revision and APS ambiguity at RBS
Meet the new, less-risky, open-for-business RBS.
The British bank has just released its 2009 results, and the company is happily trumpeting its turn-around. It’s also boasting of a reduction in the risk on its balance sheet –something it came under criticism for after being bailed-out by British taxpayers in 2008.
On those ‘epic’ declines in bank lending
Great headline from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: ‘Lending falls at epic pace’.
Of course, with a headline like that, one would expect a less-than-uplifting tale:
U.S. banks posted last year their sharpest decline in lending since 1942,
A UK money supply shock
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 (1963)
Always and everywhere apart from in Britain, that is.
The Bank of England on Thursday published provisional estimates of broad money (M4) and credit (M4 lending) for December,
UK banks still not lending
The Bank of England’s just-released trends in lending report offers some interesting statistics and charts, as ever.
Here’s a selection of some of the data points that caught FT Alphaville’s eye.
First,