Monday, February 09, 2009

The, er, credit, er, crunch


No wonder most of us have difficulty understanding the financial equivalent of the matter-antimatter drive powering the USS Enterprise. You'd think lending would have decreased, wouldn't you? Smoke and mirrors...

4 comments:

  1. NMMM.NU10 February 2009 at 10:52

    can you explain what do you mean?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sackerson10 February 2009 at 12:57

    Hi, Nikolay. Lending is supposed to have been contracting sharply and M4 is supposedly a measure of bank lending, yet these stats up to end December don't appear to reflect that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James Higham10 February 2009 at 14:20

    So, are we in a crunch or not?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sackerson10 February 2009 at 17:13

    Hi, James. I think Anthony Worrall-Thompson would confirm that we are; it's just that these M4 stats don't seem to be much of a guide to what's happening. Funny that we can measure the height of Everest down the last millimetre or two, but even long-practised experts (e.g. Brad Setser) have to guess where the money is and where it's going.

    ReplyDelete

Unfortunately, because of a plague of spam comments, you need to be a "registered user", otherwise your observations will be buried in a torrent of multilingual nonsense. Please do comment!

Say what you please, so long as it's phrased politely and is not libellous or legally proscribed. Fact, reason and wit are keenly welcomed.