Bankers and borrowers more cautious

From the Wall Street Journal:

Credit Tightens, Demand Falls
By KELLY EVANS and DAVID ENRICH
February 5, 2008; Page A3

Banks are tightening lending standards for businesses and consumers — even beyond real-estate loans — and companies’ demand for credit has weakened, a new Federal Reserve survey of senior bank-loan officers shows.

The January survey offers the hardest evidence yet that the credit crunch is spreading. Although banks also reported some tightening of lending requirements on credit cards and other consumer loans, commercial and industrial loans have been the most severely affected.

One-third of the U.S. banks and about two-thirds of the foreign banks responding told the Fed they had tightened lending standards on commercial and industrial loans during the three months ended Jan. 31. About half the banks said they have widened the spread between their cost of funds and what they are charging borrowers.

“Bankers are becoming more cautious,” said Keith Leggett, economist at the American Bankers Association in Washington, “but also borrowers are getting more cautious.”
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“The downturn in housing markets is having a ripple effect into the commercial real-estate market,” said the ABA’s Mr. Leggett. “It’s going to create some challenges for community banks,” he added, especially in parts of the country where real-estate prices have plunged the fastest.

With bad loans piling up on banks’ balance sheets, some lenders are finding themselves strained for capital. As a result, banks — especially community lenders with big portfolios of commercial real-estate loans — are balking at making new loans, even to clients with solid credit histories, said Jerry Blanchard, a partner in the financial-institutions practice at law firm Powell Goldstein LLP in Atlanta.
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On the consumer side, about 55% of the banks said they had tightened lending standards for mortgages and about 60% said they had done so on home-equity lines.