We often forget the middle 2000’s was not uniquely a housing bubble. It commanded our attention because that’s what ended up affecting so many Americans personally; whether foreclosures or just the negative “wealth effect” of declining real estate values. This was also pretty easy to understand, an asset bubble though complicated in its full manifestations intuitive as a result.

There were others, though, a proliferation of financial imbalances due to the global nature of monetary explosion. The EM corporate space was another, as was US commercial lending.

Commercial and Industrial Loans (C&I) would be late to the party, not beginning to rebound until after the “giant sucking sound” had taken a chunk out of domestic demand for credit. From May 2004 to October 2008, the Federal Reserve (H.8) estimates that lending in this space skyrocketed, an astounding 83% growth in a mere 53 months. That works out to a bubbly annual rate of nearly 15% per year.

You’ll also notice that banks really didn’t stop lending to domestic commercial enterprises until the entire financial system and economy began to collapse. The month after Lehman Brothers failed, in October 2008, C&I loans were still growing at a 15% annual rate. Beginning that November, they would eventually tumble an alarming 25% in total high to low (October 2010).

Over the eight years since, credit growth has returned at a more modest pace. Total loan values on the books of depository institutions are up again by more than 80%. This time, it has taken 96 months for them to get that far. It’s an annual rate of just 8.2%, much less than the middle 2000’s.

But even this comparison masks what’s really been going on. That “recovery” trend is really two. Credit growth has been slower, but not all at the same pace. In fact, up until April 2016, C&I loans were moving at a 10% annual increase. Since, across two and a half years, there isn’t much activity at all – a very clear change in trend therefore behavior.