Credit Crisis? What Credit Crisis?

WSJ Realtime has an interesting report via Michael Feroli of J.P. Morgan Chase about the Federal Reserve’s fourth quarter survey of terms of business lending. Apparently the Fed found evidence of only very minor tightening of credit.

“The most direct evidence of credit tightening was the increase in commercial and industrial loan spreads over the fed funds rate, which increased to 2.37% points in November from 1.93% points in the previous survey. However, that move only brings the spread back to the level it was in 2005. Moreover, given the decline in fed funds, the actual cost of business borrowing moved down to 6.87% from 7.18% the previous quarter,” Mr. Feroli said.

He added: “A handful of other indicators of bank lending terms reported on in the STBL show little meaningful change, even two months into the current period of credit market stress.”

See the WSJ Realtime post here.