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Global creditors end U.S. spending spree

By Patrice Hill (Contact) | Sunday, October 12, 2008

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The crash unfolding on Wall Street is not just the fall of once-mighty banks and corporations that took on too much debt, but the collapse of an American economy and lifestyle that for decades has been purchased with credit cards.

The nation's creditors - many of them foreign countries such as China and Brazil with ample economic needs of their own - reached a point this summer at which they were no longer willing to extend new loans in light of burgeoning default rates.

One of every 10 American homeowners has stopped making mortgage payments, and high-flying investment banks such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns that peddled American debt around the world found themselves in bankruptcy and default.

The boycott by foreign lenders is forcing U.S. businesses and consumers to live more within their means, while political leaders frantically try to find ways to keep the financial sector alive without the free flow of an estimated $3 billion a day from abroad, analysts say. The spigot of foreign money in the heyday of the credit boom earlier this decade enabled everyone from Wall Street's best and brightest to college students with no income to easily obtain cheap loans.

"The party is over," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "The current financial storm represents the death throes of the old global economic order, and perhaps the birth pains of a new one. The sun is setting on the borrow-and-spend culture that has all but defined us for a generation. ... The sooner we come to grips with this, the better."

The nation's increasing reliance on debt to grow and prosper is manifested in the current account deficits that have increased dramatically this decade. Those deficits show how much the U.S. collectively spends more than it produces and how much money is owed to the rest of the world. The federal deficit hit an unprecedented $812 billion in 2006, at the peak of the housing bubble, before declining to $738 billion last year as the housing market crumbled.

The huge external debt was financed for years with a flow of credit from abroad, but that suddenly shut down in July, when foreigners pulled $25.6 billion out of U.S. stock and bond markets, according to the Treasury's most recent figures on international capital flows. About the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, former favorites of Asian investors in particular, started having trouble raising funds. The government later took over the mortgage giants as they became insolvent.

"We can no longer entice foreigners into lending us their available savings," said Mr. Schiff. "Given that we are already too loaded up on existing debt that we cannot realistically repay, who can blame them for not wanting to lend us more?"

With the abrupt shutdown of the credit spigot this summer, the housing and credit markets faced an outright crisis and easy loans all but disappeared. Consumer spending reached its biggest decline in years as banks - having difficulty raising funds - severely limited access to mortgages, home-equity loans and other kinds of credit.

"The day of reckoning appears to have arrived," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital, noting that scarcer credit is forcing Americans to save more of their income and spend less. One result is that the trade deficit is now dropping at a 25 percent annual rate, he said. "As Americans retrench, the structural imbalances that the world bludgeoned us about will shrink in size all too quickly."