Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke today said US banks may be turning a corner and starting to relax lending standards that have been tight since the 2008 credit crisis, according to dpa. Bernanke said the US economy was recovering faster than anticipated from a deep recession in 2009, while the number of bad loans that banks still have on their books was shrinking. "I see some reasons for optimism," Bernanke said, according to the prepared remarks of a speech to Fed officials in Chicago. "Bank attitudes toward lending may be shifting." Banks have come under fire for limiting lending to consumers and businesses even as their bottom lines have recovered from the 2008 financial crisis that brought Wall Street to the brink of collapse. After hundreds of billions of dollars in bail-outs of the industry, the continuing tight credit access has fuelled public anger against Wall Street and put pressure on President Barack Obama's administration to take action. While confidence in the banking system had been restored, Bernanke acknowledged that the goal of reviving lending "has not yet been realized, as bank lending continues to contract and terms and conditions remain tight." But Bernanke noted that a survey by the Federal Reserve in April suggested banks had not changed their lending standards since the start of the year, marking the first time since 2007 that financial firms did not report tighter credit access.
