What is the Credit Finance and Saving Economics?
Credit
finance
Credit, transaction between two parties in which one (the creditor or lender) supplies money, goods, services, or securities in return for a promised future payment by the other (the debtor or borrower). Such transactions normally include the payment of interest to the lender. Credit may be extended by public or private institutions to finance business activities, agricultural operations, consumer expenditures, or government projects.
Most modern credit is extended through specialized financial institutions, of which commercial banks are the oldest and most important. In present-day industrial economies, the banks are able to extend and increase the supply of credit by the creation of new deposits for their loan customers.
The lender must judge each loan he makes on the basis of the character of the borrower (his intention to repay), his capacity to repay (based on his potential for earning income), and his collateral (property pledged in case of default on the loan). The terms of credit transactions may be publicly regulated to prevent abuses by customers and lenders as well as to channel credit into particular sectors of the economy.
In fields for which adequate private financing is not available, governments may extend credit. Public lending programs, often combined with public systems of savings collection, provide a large portion of housing finance in many European and Asian countries. In the U.S., public credit is frequently extended for housing, small business, and agriculture.
Commercial banks in both industrialized and less developed countries are often reluctant to extend agricultural credit because of the high risk involved; such loans are usually made only to very large farms. In addition to government credit, cooperative credit systems have been particularly important in less developed countries, where they are often the only source of funds available to small farmers at reasonable rates of interest.
Saving
economics
Saving, process of setting aside a portion of current income for future use, or the flow of resources accumulated in this way over a given period of time. Saving may take the form of increases in bank deposits, purchases of securities, or increased cash holdings. The extent to which individuals save is affected by their preferences for future over present consumption, their expectations of future income, and to some extent by the rate of interest.
There are two ways for an individual to measure his saving for a given accounting period. One is to estimate his income and subtract his current expenditures, the difference being his saving. The alternative is to examine his balance sheet (his property and his debts) at the beginning and end of the period and measure the increase in net worth, which reflects his saving.
Total national saving is measured as the excess of national income over consumption and taxes and is the same as national investment, or the excess of net national product over the parts of the product made up of consumption goods and services and items bought by government expenditures. Thus, in national income accounts, saving is always equal to investment. An alternative measure of saving is the estimated change in total net worth over a period of time.
Saving is important to the economic progress of a country because of its relation to investment. If there is to be an increase in productive wealth, some individuals must be willing to abstain from consuming their entire income. Progress is not dependent on saving alone; there must also be individuals willing to invest and thereby increase productive capacity.
