When banks are feeling better about their borrowers ability to repay loans they release the provisions which then ups earnings.

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Italy has Europe's second-largest debt level and the cost of that debt has been rising in recent weeks as lenders to Italy have become nervous about its ability to repay loans.

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Mr Osborne said that Greece had to address "several difficult questions" over how it was going to borrow money from the markets, which are "sceptical" about the country's ability to repay its loans.

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But investment has fallen in the rich world too: the rivers of capital have flowed not directly into businesses but into markets for consumer and government credit, where they are presumably doing little to increase the recipient economy's ability to repay the loans in the future.

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This encouraged broad indifference to the ability of many consumers to repay loans, which dramatically increased mortgage delinquencies and rates of foreclosures.

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It has also affected confidence among mortgage borrowers, the ability of companies to borrow against property to finance investment, and the ability of property developers and speculators to repay their existing loans.

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The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act created broad-based changes to how creditors make loans including new ability-to-repay standards, which we are charged with implementing.

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We entered the workforce in a recession, with no expectation of anything except the ability to prove ourselves through hard work and to repay our student loans.

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