Thursday, October 2, 2014

Commercial and Industrial Loan Chop Suey (Musical Tribute)

The following chart shows commercial and industrial loans at all commercial banks.


Click to enlarge.

I have added two of the more interesting exponential trends in blue (Jan 1947 to Nov 1989) and red (Oct 2010 to Aug 2014). Also note the numerous trend failures since 1990.

How many more exponential trend failures will it take before we finally learn that this 10% exponential growth rate is not sustainable over the long-term? I have never seen a chart that represents "doomed to failure" more than this one. It's only a matter of time before it implodes again, and you can take that to the bank. Literally.



I don't think you trust
In my self-righteous suicide

Yeah, well, as a taxpayer I'm the one who gets to bail you banks out when you implode again. Perhaps that's why I am distrustful.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Commercial and Industrial Loans, All Commercial Banks

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

These charts are a nice antidote to all the boosterish news coming out these days.

Fred

Stagflationary Mark said...

Fred,

In my opinion, the following does not take a great leap of faith.

This sluggish/weakened disinflationary economy cannot support nominal debt growth rates of 10% over the long-term!

We do seem *very* determined to try though, lol. Sigh. :(

Anonymous said...

Based on the Japanese experience, "long-term" can be very long, indeed. But,I guess they had trade surpluses until just recently which helped a lot.

Fred

Stagflationary Mark said...

Fred,

I don't know. It seems like we have the advantage here. Just think of all the practice we have had at running deficits. In fact, I think we may have mastered "deficit technology", lol. Sigh. :(