Word: crunches
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...because of higher labor and commodities costs and because of the simple fact that China's boom resulted in the creation of far more factories than global demand could possibly support in a cyclical downturn. A shakeout is unavoidable, and it is being made worse by the worldwide credit crunch. Nervous banks, Lau says, have reduced the credit lines of many small manufacturers by up to 50%, starving them of operating funds. Letters of credit, which facilitate the shipment of exports, were once automatically accepted by banks in Hong Kong, but now they are being held until bankers are sure...
...credit crunch is not anywhere near over. "It took 20 years for us to get into this situation - leveraged to the hilt - and it will take more than a couple of years to unwind it," says Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. "And even when we get back to normal, that normal is not going to be the same. We won't have this sort of freely available credit that we had before for households and businesses. It's going to be a different reality - a more austere one - when we come out on the other...
...than investment banks - as if there were some button they could push to make it happen. But the truth is that for U.S. banks, reducing their use of debt and rebuilding their devastated balance sheets is a long and painful process. Deleveraging is part of what creates a credit crunch: institutions that have been hammered by the decline in real estate prices will be making fewer loans available to businesses and consumers alike...
...that the credit crunch is rolling full-tilt into the real economy, even credit unions with the benefit of geography likely won't be able to escape the effects of recession. At the 66,000-member Unitus Community Credit Union in Portland, Ore., loan volume is up this year in nearly every category - 32% in mortgages, 37% in student loans, 12% in credit cards - but so are delinquencies. Since the beginning of the year, late payments have increased from...
...world is in the grips of a perilous market crunch, the boom is over, and tough times loom. The U.K.'s FTSE-100 stock index has nose-dived and is down about 35% in the past year. Two famous British banks have already imploded--Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. And after a dramatic plunge in the stock price of other banks, on Oct. 8 the British government announced an emergency $88 billion recapitalization package that includes partially nationalizing three other banks: Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Lloyds TSB. The City has been through enough slumps to know what...