Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a hair-raising piece in the Telegraph on the contraction of US credit markets:

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said US bank loans have fallen at an annual pace of almost 14pc in the three months to August (from $7,147bn to $6,886bn).

"There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s," he said. "The rapid destruction of money balances is madness."

At the end of the piece Congdon tells Evans-Pritchard that "the Federal Reserve and other central banks will be forced to engage in outright monetisation of government debt by next year." Scary stuff.

--------------------------------------------
Follow the RCP Blog on Twitter.
Become a fan of RCP on Facebook.
--------------------------------------------