Europe Is Now Re-Leveraging

Re-leveraging will drive Europe’s growth. At the beginning of this week, the Bank of England issued a warning to the UK’s lending companies. The central bank’s message was clear; it wants lenders to tighten their lending criteria and boost capital buffers to protect against a potential rise in default rates. Specifically, policymakers asked firms to look at the terms under which they are granting zero-balance transfers on credit cards and the basis on which they are issuing personal loans. And with consumer credit in the UK growing at a rate of around 10.9% per annum, significantly more than the 2.3%…