Interesting comment from one of the dinosaur banks (?).
Don Coxe is now saying that the US regional banks are finding things much easier, as indicated by the TED spread (difference between 3 month US treasuries and how much banks charge each other for money) being quite low. He thinks that those regional banks, who fundamentally have stuck to their knitting ie taking in bank deposits and lending out the money to businesses, are distancing themselves from the US investment banks (of which Macquarie is one) who were able to generate super profits in recent decades by securitising and repackaging derivatives of risk. (sorry no link).
The four big Australian banks and the five big Canadian banks, all of whom are top rated, operate more like the US regional banks than the US investment banks. Interestingly, a number of UK and European banks, who transformed themselves into US investment bank style operations in the chase for profits, are doing as badly as the real investment banks.
If Mr Coxe's assessment is even close to being right then I would imagine that any credit crunch for stock standard businesses, like farmers, will start to ease off much sooner than the 3 years quoted by Macquarie (the logic being that the banks are cashed up and need to earn better returns on that money than being offered by US Treasuries).
