Why is there is no lending in crisis?

On LinkedIn, Callum Thomas has shared a post detailing tightness in lending standards and gradual shifting to tight credit conditions.

Lending standards tighten at the exact wrong time in a crisis. Also in a crisis the ratings get downgraded en masse. When we want banks to lend, banks do not want to lend. When we want banks to stop lending, banks get busy making risky loans. This is one problem of banking regulation that has not received enough attention. 

Markets and particularly rating agencies need to appreciate the difference between Macro risk (where all aspects of the economy are impaired) v/s corporate risk (where particular company suffers impairment because of its own actions or inactions).

Credit cannot be pushed - it needs to be pulled. To achieve this, a better mechanism is interest subvention. It seems to be a much better tool when macros risks are prevalent.

An SPV which guarantees interest rate up to X% (ranging from 30-50% of lending rate - so for India it will guarantee 3% interest cost for US it could 0.75%) it should cause firms to pull credit and deploy it for productive uses.

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Rahul Prakash Deodhar, Advocate, Bombay High Court is also a private investor. He can be reached at rahuldeodhar@gmail.com, on twitter at @rahuldeodhar or at his website www.rahuldeodhar.com.

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