The Federal Reserve reported yesterday that banks in the U.S. saw increased demand from businesses and consumers for lending and in turn made those loans more readily available, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. “Domestic banks, on balance, reported having eased their lending standards on many types of business and consumer loans and having experienced increases in loan demand, on average, over the past three months,” the Fed said today in its quarterly survey of senior loan officers. The survey shows banks loosening the reins of credit for many categories of lending, including commercial real estate, commercial and industrial loans for firms of all sizes, credit cards, auto loans and other consumer loans. An exception was declining demand for mortgages. The report supports forecasts for stronger economic growth among Fed policy makers, who last week trimmed their monthly bond purchases to $65 billion from $75 billion. They see growth picking up this year to 2.8 percent to 3.2 percent, according to their most recent forecasts released in December.
