Debt falling while credit is tight

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. corporations and consumers are downsizing debt while credit remains tight, possibly marking a sea change in spending attitudes, a bank economist said.

"Attitudes toward spending and debt have changed semi-permanently," David Rosenberg at investment bank Merrill Lynch wrote in a recent report for clients, The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday.

The recent credit crunch that began last summer marks a reversal from "one extreme a couple of years ago," when credit was easy to obtain to now, with "the pendulum swung way over in the other direction," said the chief economist at IHS Global Insight, Nariman Behravesh.

But, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis published a report in October that said credit was not completely dried up.

Mortgage debt has declined along with home sales and home values, but consumer credit has risen in the past year, while bank lending to corporations remains relatively stable, the report said.

Finding credit is difficult, but "not impossible," said Mark Shooman, an accountant in the Boston area.

On the other hand, "it shouldn't be really easy to get funding," he said.