The Credit Crunch Peaks

The April 2009 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending was released yesterday and the results show that the "credit crunch," may have peaked. Here are highlights:

Forty percent of domestic respondents reported having tightened their credit standards on commercial and industrial (C&I) loans. This was down considerably from the 65% in the January survey.

Sixty five percent of domestic respondents reported having tightened their credit standards on commercial real estate loans (CRE). Once again, this was down from the 80% in the January survey.

The story was somewhat mixed for consumers, where a higher percent of banks tightened standards on Residential Mortgage Loans, both prime and non prime.

On credit card loans and other consumer loans the opposite was true, a smaller percentage of banks tightened standards on these loans.

Here is the full survey and some charts to look at.