World bank lending plummets

Banks cut cross-border lending by 1.1 trillion dollars (977,000 billion euros) in the second quarter and clients withdrew a similar amount, central bank data on the severity of the global credit crisis showed on Thursday.
Cross-border lending fell to 39.1 trillion dollars during the period, the biggest decline for a decade, figures compiled by the Bank for International Settlements, the world's biggest central banking body, revealed.
Banks were also hit by one trillion dollars' worth of withdrawals, particularly by clients in the United States, Britain and Switzerland, said the BIS.
"In the second quarter of 2008, BIS reporting banks' total international claims declined by 1.1 trillion dollars at constant exchange rates to 39.1 trillion," said the Bank for International Settlements in its quarterly banking statistics review.
The scale of the contraction in lending far exceeded the only other two falls posted in the decade.