It is bad when the most pertinent of commentaries gets no response. What is ironic here is that at the micro level banks are telling their public stop pretending we are not extending even though they face near zero costs or in the case of the US negative costs.
You leave out an important scenario: in a zero interest rate environment, no bank is bad. This is why otherwise insolvent banks like Bank of America or Citi can stay solvent. It doesn’t matter the proportion of non-performing loans on the asset side as long as its cost of funds is minimal. Banks are thus engaged in a race with time to capture a positive return to recapitalize before interest rates rise.
Posted by: Guillaume | November 08, 2010 at 10:48 PM
Yep extend and pretend. That is the future but it is not as yet the present.
Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy 