U.S. Treasury Gives Up Monthly Data

The U.S. Treasury had states that they will no longer publish Bank lending summaries on a monthly basis because of how deceiving they can be. The last published summary showed that there was a 35% decrease in bank lending from December 09 to January 10. This piece of information could upset people very much because one of the goals of the financial bailout in 08 was to increase loans to consumers and small businesses. A piece of information that is not evident from the monthly summary is that the assets held by banks has decreased from 61% in November 08 to 17% in January 10. From this information we can conclude that the monthly summaries are meaningless and very deceiving which is why I agree with the Treasury Department's decision to no longer publish monthly summaries.