By 2006 the situation had become so bleak that Mr Ford and Don LeClair, then his finance director, decided to undertake a dramatic refinancing of the business by raising bank loans secured against the company's assets.

ECONOMIST: Ford

Anxiety about sovereign-default risk, and the budget-cutting measures to counter it, will further sap the peripheral economies, thus raising the chances of big losses on the loans British banks have made there.

ECONOMIST: The economy and the euro

Allowing SMEs to issue junk bonds will give companies that have trouble getting bank loans an alternative means of raising capital.

FORBES: China In Transition

Raising the rate of interest paid on excess reserves can make new bank loans less attractive, thus tempering overall credit creation.

ECONOMIST: Quantitative easing

He also repeated other goals of Democrats, including raising the minimum wage, cutting interest rates on student loans, and working for energy independence.

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Raising equity at that valuation is out of the question, and with conventional bank loans in China having a maximum term of one year, Tri-Tech turned to the bond market, a new source of capital in China, to obtain longer term financing.

FORBES: China's SMEs Access The Bond Market

According to Bismarck Rewane, an analyst at Lagos-based Financial Derivatives, many of the banks have managed to meet the capitalisation benchmark by raising capital through share offerings and entering into special treaties which sometimes involve the exchange of loans for deposits.

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