While financial and sovereign spreads in the most optically sensitive entities has rallied magnificently for the last few months – helped and extended by LTRO 1 and LTRO 2 – the weakness of the last week or so in both of these critical systemic risk indicators (Sovereign spreads in Spain and Italy and the LTRO Stigma that we noted earlier [7]) should be worrisome for many of the leaders who are using market action as a corollary for their actions. What is most worrisome however is the absolute and utter lack of impact to the ‘real economy’ of Europe as PMIs have continued to slip and sentiment stumbles – nowhere is this more evident than in charts of Corporate Credit Demand and Corporate Credit Availability, which as Morgan Stanley notes today, suggest the deleveraging balance sheet recessionary impacts felt in Japan and the US are now writ large in European minds as minimizing debt dominates maximizing profits (or living standards). Demand for credit is sliding for both large and small firms and bank lending standards continue to tighten aggressively for both large and small firms. As austerity continues and credit contracts, it seems apparent that the much-hoped for shallow recession in Europe will be deeper and longer than most currently believe.
Demand from small firms for credit - just as we saw in the US - is lagging notably now. Large firms also are showing falling demand but at a shallower rate but with jobless rates so high already and the smaller firms (as in the US) as the engine of job creation, it seems problems are playing out in a similar path to the other deleveraging regions of the world...
[8]
And lending standards have only become tighter even as banks have supposedly been flodded with encumbered cash...
[8]
Source: Morgan Stanley