Search results for "credit supply"

The Washington consensus and multinational banking in Latin America

2004

International audience; The dramatic increase in multinational banks in the late 1990s is a direct result of Washington Consensus-type policies that emphasize the removal of barriers to the free flow of financial capital. In Latin America, foreign banks now control almost half of the total banking activity. Inevitably, the direct implication of such circumstances is a fall in the profits of domestic banks. In response to this, domestic banks react by curtailing their overall lending in the short run, thereby preventing small borrowers from accession to credit, and eventually increasing their lending to riskier projects and borrowers in the medium run. Either way, the multinationalization of…