One might expect bank borrowing to rise during a recession as businesses seek extra credit to tide them over; the data have to be seen in this context. Indeed, in the 1990s recession lending by banks adjusted for inflation continued to rise (with one interruption) until almost the end of the recession. However, recently lending to UK businesses has been declining, as figure 1 shows. This indicates lending by UK and foreign banks to non-bank businesses with data available up to the end of the third quarter of 2008 after deflating with the GDP deflator.