In China the easing of credit has been even more important than its fiscal stimulus.
Add to that the slight easing of credit standards I wrote about in Easier Business Credit: 4 Strategies for Corporations and Small Business.
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But industry experts say that for now, it mostly means more attractive terms for the healthiest borrowers, as opposed to a major easing of credit standards.
My research for It Was a Very Good Year found two themes that linked most of those years: (a) either the economy or the market started off at a depressed level and (b) an easing of credit boosted stock prices.
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But the hoped-for easing of the credit markets hasn't materialized.
Whenever the Fed does decide to signal a potential pullback of its aggressive credit easing, after a long period of record-low rates, analysts say the shift could jolt investors.
The Treasury will be nationalising the provision of loans to small businesses through credit easing, because of the perceived failure of the semi-nationalised banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, to direct money where it is most needed.
But Citi is just the poster child for an industry that has yet to see any signs of easing in the credit crisis that began last summer.
Hopefully, once we get past that point, the combination of an easing credit crisis, a rebounding economy, and just lower home production, fewer new homes being added to the market, will all work inventory levels down and start to stabilize pricing.
On the official version of events, Mr Osborne's credit easing will be an example of "monetary activism", as he suggests - not fiscal policy as many might imagine.
Bank chairmen also told the governor that the demand for bank credit was easing and there were clear signs of a slowdown of credit demand in power, roads and telecom.
The financial crisis has led to such a widening of credit spreads and tightening of credit standards that aggressive monetary policy easing has not been enough to contain the crisis.
In both places, a tightening of welfare rules and an easing of labour-market restrictions can take the credit.
"This would put internal credit creation back under the control of the state, " they say, even if it only took the form of SME lending targets, credit easing and some infrastructure programmes.
This was made clear in a speech last week by the prime minister, who talked about building on the Treasury's use of so-called "credit easing" to channel cheap finance to housing projects, businesses and infrastructure.
Finally, a portion of the recent gain comes from banks easing credit standards.
Digging deeper into the lie that is quantitative easing, history reveals that the act of creating dollar credit out of thin air is tantamount to dollar devaluation.
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Which is why the chancellor is committed to using taxpayers' money to underwrite the riskier elements of small-business loans, in a new initiative called "credit easing" - whose details are yet to be announced.
At Ockham, our view of the quarter is mixed as trading revenues and fees from investment banking were rather anemic, yet credit concerns are easing to the point that they can take funds out of their reserves.
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Critics have queried the effectiveness of the bank's existing easing efforts, which have failed to stir much demand for credit.
In easing rapidly and proactively, we sought to offset, at least in part, the tightening of credit conditions associated with the crisis and thus to mitigate the effects on the broader economy.
The chart at right shows the percentage of loan officers who say they are tightening credit minus the percentage who say they are easing credit.
The scheme "will support the flow of credit to where it is needed, complementing the MPC's asset purchase programme in easing monetary policy conditions", he said in a letter to Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King.
"If people have a good business need for credit and they're worthy of being lent to, I believe they're able to get credit whether there's quantitative easing or not, " he said.
Well much will depend on whether the Treasury's preferred policy, of getting the current big banks to provide subsidised loans to smaller businesses - through its "credit-easing" policy - is showing that it will have impact.
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