Quote from bigarrow:
First the article talks about how marginally qualified borrowers will borrow more due to the low interest rates. Then he says the banks are wary of loaning to marginal borrowers.
âAt 1%, marginal borrowers (the kind who are most likely to default) qualify for loans.â
âTalk about unintended consequences. The Fed's ZIRP punishes the prudent and rewards financier gamblers and encourages marginal borrowers who are tomorrow's defaulters.â
âThe top 5% have improved their debt-income ratios, but the lower 95% don't qualify for new loans or refinancing. Now that the banks are weighed down with bad debt and writedowns, they are wary of loaning more to marginal borrowers.â
What a load of crap. I know youâre a little slow witted bath tao but even you should of caught this before you posted it. Geesh
Yeah, I can see how that would appear confusing to someone - someone who has no fucking comprehension how anything in monetary policy actually works.
See, the problem, my old Texas road construction friend, is that these articles are written with the assumption that the reader already understands the back story. This way, lots of points can be rattled off on the premise that the previous proofs have already been established and generally accepted. That is a major flaw of the financial blogs, of course. They hope the reader has the basic grasp of economics, banking and the flow of money so that the article doesn't have to have a 20 page back drop. Now, when someone like yourself with the a reading venue of "Pull Tab To Open" shows up, it doesn't always flow that well, which is why sometimes you see these folks in the comment section writing "wtf are you guys talking about". These commentators are then eviscerated.
But alas, I understand where you're coming from, because I was once in that boat when I was 18 or so, and I remember. You're what, 55 or 60 or something? You may not have all that much time to embark on a Knowledge Pursuit in your mediocre life, but that doesn't mean you can't still try.
What the author is doing is speaking to two sets of circumstances - what the Fed's limitation is: Fed policy can lower interest rate policy in order to make banks find it cheaper to lend to marginal borrowers, and then in a healthy environment, these banks will lend to lower credit scores folks who are more likely to default
just like they did during the housing boom.
The problem, of course, is that now bank's balance sheets are so impaired and rotten that they won't even do that - because they know these borrowers will have a much greater chance of defaulting, and they cannot handle that. This is, of course, assuming these borrowers are willing to take out more loans - which evidence shows they are not (as a whole). IE, the whole, you cannot force people to take more debt idea that Shedlock writes about. So instead, the bankers park these monies at the Federal Reserve and speculate in the marking using them. Hence, the comment about maybe creating a few jobs at trading desks. After all, why lend to marginal buyers at 5% when you can make 10% on oil futures? (these numbers are for illustration only, mind you).
So now that I've given you the primer, maybe going back and re-reading might help a bit. Don't worry, even if other teachers have thought you were a lost cause (probably why you are in the field you are), I won't give up on you!
Big smile, k?