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Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray has struck a $725 million settlement with American International Group to resolve charges of bid-rigging, accounting fraud and other practices that officials said led investors nationwide to lose millions.

New York-based AIG through the settlement has agreed to put up $175 million upon preliminary court approval of the deal. According to information from Cordray's office, the company plans to fund the remaining $550 million of the settlement through stock offerings.

At the center of the settlement are a range of fraud allegations over the company’s conduct from October 1999 through April 2005. The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, State Teachers Retirement System and state Police and Fire Pension Fund served as lead plaintiffs in the national class-action suit, roots of which stretch back to the tenure of former Attorney General Jim Petro paperless payday loans.

The former AG sued AIG in 2004 after New York officials probed charges of bid-rigging among the firm and other insurers.

That probe uncovered new charges and led to the ouster of Hank Greenberg, AIG’s longtime CEO and a case against a reinsurer tied to AIG, General Reinsurance Corp. Four former General Reinsurance executives and a former AIG executive have since been convicted of conspiracy and fraud charges tied to a deal that allegedly helped AIG inflate its loss reserves.

A number of parties tied to AIG, including Greenberg, have struck settlements with Ohio totaling $284.5 million since the litigation began.

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Goldman Sachs’ legal troubles just keep piling up — and it’s becoming a bigger headache for the investment bank and its shareholders.

Shares of Goldman Sachs sat out Thursday’s market rally. The stock tumbled nearly 3% in mid-afternoon trading and hit a new 52-week low after reports surfaced late Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a mortgage investment Goldman bundled and sold in 2006 called Hudson Mezzanine.

The SEC is already investigating possible fraud involved with an investment Goldman created called Abacus. A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment on whether the agency was indeed conducting an investigation into Hudson Mezzanine.

The reports follow news that Wall Street’s top firm was hit with a lawsuit from Basis Capital, an Australian hedge fund that invested in Timberwolf, another mortgage-backed security that Goldman sold in 2007. Basis is seeking more than $1 billion in damages in its civil suit.

A representative from Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) declined comment on the reported government investigation, but issued a sharp rebuke to the Timberwolf suit, calling it "a misguided attempt by Basis…to shift its investment losses to Goldman Sachs."

The latest developments are another setback for the once-impervious investment bank. A number of shareholder suits have been filed against Goldman in recent months. There have also been reports it is facing a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors.

At the center of it all however, is the SEC’s civil suit against Goldman, in which it charged the firm with defrauding clients on the sale of Abacus, a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO.

So far, there have been few signs of progress on the case. But that may soon be changing.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Goldman currently has until June 22 to file a formal response to the SEC’s suit.

Experts suggest that Goldman will most likely call the government’s bluff and demand it drop the case as opposed to reaching a settlement by the deadline.

Such a move could help Goldman save face after it has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. It would also potentially give the firm more insight into the SEC’s case as well as additional time to negotiate a possible settlement.

The spokesmen for the SEC and Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the status of the Abacus case.

But legal observers are confident that neither party has the stomach for an ugly courtroom battle cash till payday advance. Some have suggested the SEC does not want to risk an embarrassing courtroom loss given how anxious it has been to shore up its reputation in the wake of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme.

Goldman, on the other hand, doesn’t want to tangle with one of its biggest regulators and bringing any more negative attention to the company.

"Both parties are in very deep water," said Thomas Gorman, a former attorney in the SEC’s division of enforcement who now works in private practice at the law firm Porter Wright.

What seems certain is that the two sides will eventually reach a settlement. How quickly that happens remains anyone’s guess. According to several recent reports, Goldman attorneys have met with SEC officials. But the two parties are apparently no closer to an agreement.

Jay Brown, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, who focuses on corporate and securities law, said the possibility of a settlement by June 22 was "a very unlikely prospect."

Brown added that even if they were getting nearer to a deal, the parties would probably need more time just to hammer out the details.

Experts have said that one of biggest potential stumbling blocks in any negotiation is the terms of the settlement, versus any fine Goldman might be assessed.

Many believe that Goldman will attempt to seek a deal in which it agrees to lesser charges to avoid any impact on its client base and limit its exposure to the various shareholder suits the company faces. That may be a tough compromise however for the SEC, which is betting its reputation on this case.

"Goldman will want to get rid of that fraud charge and there is no reason for the SEC to drop it now," said Gorman.

One former high-ranking official in the SEC’s enforcement division said dragging out the settlement talks, however, won’t help either party. While the SEC has plenty of other cases to prosecute, Goldman is just as anxious to get out of the spotlight and get back to the business of making money.

"It doesn’t help Goldman or the SEC to have it go on for a long period of time," said the attorney, who requested anonymity out of fear of the impact it could have on business at his current law firm. "If you are going to settle, do it sooner and get it over with." 

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Gov. Bev Perdue confirmed late Thursday afternoon that American Express will build a new data center in eastern Guilford County.

American Express had sought a location for a new $400 million data center that would employ up to 150 people.

“The decision today by American Express is great news for Guilford County and for North Carolina,” Perdue said in a statement. “I spoke recently to the American Express CEO, during the company’s final decision-making process, and emphasized North Carolina’s outstanding work force and business-friendly environment. We clearly made a compelling case to land this important project, bolstering our already-strong reputation as an excellent location for data centers, which bring sustainable jobs and significant investment.”

American Express already employs more than 2,000 people in Greensboro at a customer service center.

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Former U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall died Saturday. He was 90.

Udall served under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1960s. He previously served as a congressman from Arizona.

Stewart Udall was the brother of the late Morris Udall and the father of U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. He is viewed as one of the early leaders in the modern U no teletrack payday loan.S. environmental and conservation movements.

He died of natural causes in New Mexico, according to statements by his family.

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has filled one of the several key vacancies in his administration - without leaving City Hall.

Brown tapped Brendan Mehaffy as the executive director of the Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning, one of the city's primary economic development agencies.

Mehaffy is an attorney in Buffalo's law department. With his appointment, effective March 29, he will be paid $82,257 annually.

Mehaffy replaces the embattled Brian Reilly, who resigned late last year. The department had been run on an interim basis by Drew Eszak, a respected planner.

Brown said he hopes Mehaffy's appointment will bring some stability to a Buffalo office that has been something of a revolving door. Last year, Brown recruited Buffalo native Michael Kimelberg to head the department, but Kimelberg - in a surprise move -decided to remain in Seattle.

Mehaffy's appointment comes just weeks after Brown pledged to update Buffalo's antiquated zoning codes and to merge the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency and Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. into a single, one-stop entity.

"This is an exciting time in our city's history with a variety of development projects changing the city's landscape," Mehaffy said.

Mehaffy holds a bachelor's degree in economics from SUNY Binghamton, a master's degree in urban regional planning from the London School of Economics and is a graduate of the University at Buffalo's School of Law.

"His knowledge of land use planning and project development was honed through both his academic and professional experiences," Brown said. "Brendan has been the city's point person on several high profile projects, including negotiations with the county to return the operation and maintenance of city parks back to Buffalo."

The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, who helped Brown with his search, recommended Mehaffy.

Brown still has to fill other high level administrative vacancies including police and fire chief.

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For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.

Measured against a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations proportioned by how they trade against each other, the greenback is up about 3 percent since 1975, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes. That was four years after the Bretton Woods agreement, set up in 1944 to link currencies to the price of gold, collapsed. The U.K. pound has dropped 34 percent and the Canadian dollar has fallen 6 percent.

The U.S. dollar gained 6 percent since November after losing 12 percent in the first 11 months of 2009 as measured by the Bloomberg index. Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley say the U.S. will grow faster than the rest of the developed world this year and 2011. At the same time, Europe faces worsening finances in Greece, Spain and Portugal, Japan’s economy is struggling and concerns about valuations in emerging markets are increasing.

“To quote Mark Twain, the reports of the dollar’s demise have been greatly exaggerated,” said Win Thin, a senior currency strategist in New York at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which manages about $40 billion in assets.

Rising Demand

Nowhere is that more evident than in the market for U.S. Treasuries. The amount of America’s government debt held by investors outside the U.S. rose 17 percent to $3.6 trillion in 2009 through November, according to the Treasury Department.

Purchases may continue to rise as investors seek refuge from growing sovereign credit risk in the euro area. The dollar “will benefit from relative liquidity of the U.S. Treasury markets,” Barclays Capital currency strategists led by David Woo in London said in a Feb. 5 report.

Barclays Capital economists said in a report the same day that U.S. gross domestic product may grow 3.6 percent this year, versus 2.5 percent for the developed world, and 3.1 percent in 2011, compared with 2.6 percent elsewhere. Japan’s GDP may expand 1.9 percent this year, and the euro zone 1.3 percent, they said.

A day earlier, strategists at New York-based Morgan Stanley boosted their dollar forecast, saying it will strengthen to $1.24 per euro by year-end from its previous estimate of $1.32. It traded at $1.3676 as of 6:46 a.m. in New York today. The firm sees the U.S. currency gaining to 109 yen from 89.42 today, and rallying to $1.49 to the pound from $1.5578

Reserve Currency

Investors and traders predicted last year the dollar would lose its position as the world’s reserve currency, which means it’s the first place central banks look to park their cash.

“With all the concerns about the problems with the U.S. financial system last year, the banking sector in the euro zone looked a bit more stable,” said Robert Sinche, chief strategist at Lily Pond Capital Management LLC in New York. “That created a sense of the euro as an alternative to the dollar.”

Central banks that disclose breakdowns of their reserves bought a record $60 billion worth of euros in 2009’s second quarter, more than half of their new cash in the period, based on International Monetary Fund data adjusted for exchange-rate changes using methodology developed by Barclays Capital.

They then reversed course, putting 15 percent of new reserves, or $17.8 billion, into euros in the third quarter, the smallest share of any period in which their reserves grew since early 2008. Central banks put 45 percent, or $52 billion, into dollars, up from 36 percent.

Rally by Default

Rather than a referendum on the U.S., the dollar may be rallying by default. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, said on Feb. 4 that the greenback may weaken for the next three years.

Moody’s Investors Service said last week the U.S. government’s Aaa bond rating will come under pressure unless additional measures are taken to reduce budget deficits projected for the next decade. The ratio of government debt to GDP and revenue increased “sharply” during the seizure in credit markets and recession, Moody’s said.

“If the current upward trend in government debt were to continue and become irreversible, the rating could come under downward pressure,” said analysts led by Steven Hess, a senior credit officer at Moody’s in New York.

The Obama administration’s plan to offset spending by more than $1.2 trillion over 10 years showed larger deficits and higher debt levels than in the original budget, Moody’s said. The ratio of debt to GDP in the U.S. will continue to expand, reaching 76.5 percent in 2019 compared with an earlier forecast of 70.1 percent, Moody’s said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an ABC News interview broadcast yesterday the U.S. isn’t in danger of losing its Aaa rating.

“Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”

‘A Better Bet’

The U.S. Office of Management & Budget said America’s budget deficit will fall each year through 2014, to $706 billion from $1.56 trillion in 2010, as borrowing needs drop to $814 billion from $1.75 trillion.

“Under stress, people trust the U.S. to do the right thing,” said Sebastien Galy, a currency strategist at BNP Paribas SA in New York. “The U.S. is a better bet.”

A global reserve currency must provide investors with the ability to invest, which requires liquid markets, and few capital controls, according to investors. China’s yuan can’t replace the dollar because it isn’t fully convertible and doesn’t float freely. The euro region and the markets for commodity currencies, such as the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollar, don’t have enough trading to absorb the amount of cash the reserve banks hold.

‘No Alternative’

“There is no alternative to the dollar, so it’s status as a reserve currency can’t be under threat,” said Adam Boyton, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York.

The dollar’s preeminence will remain intact, as it continues to be the most widely used currency in business and finance worldwide, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a report released Jan. 5. Some $580 billion in banknotes, or 65 percent of all bills in circulation, were held outside the U.S. as of March 2009, according to Fed data.

The greenback has an 86 percent share of the foreign- exchange market, more than twice the euro’s 37 percent. Its share of the international debt market is 39 percent.

“The international role of the dollar remains substantial a decade after the introduction of the euro, and despite changes in the value of the dollar and the financial turmoil that began in 2007,” Linda Goldberg, a vice president at the New York Fed, wrote in the report.

Relative Deficits

While the Congressional Budget Office expects America’s debt to reach 65 percent of GDP in 2010, that would still be below the 77 percent of GDP the European Commission expects for Germany, the U.K.’s 80 percent and Japan’s 180 percent.

“I would want to stay away from the euro, the euro zone and some of the emerging European currencies,” Michael Gomez, the co-head of emerging markets at Pacific Investment Management Co., said on Feb. 4 at a conference in Moscow. The Newport Beach, California-based firm manages the world’s biggest bond fund.

At their meeting this weekend in Iqaluit, Canada, Group of Seven finance ministers pledged to press ahead with economic stimulus measures. Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters that “we need to continue to deliver the stimulus to which we are mutually committed and begin looking at exit strategies to move to a more sustainable fiscal track.”

Yen Gains

Rather than using a weighted average of exchange rates based on trade data, which is reported on lag and subject to revision, the Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes calculate weights based on variances in exchange rates.

The indexes have a start date of Jan. 2, 1975, and a base value of 100. The index for the dollar was little changed at 102.69 today and the yen index was at 395.70. The Swiss franc index was at 271.20 and the euro index was at 107.60, from 271.23 and 107.58 on Feb. 5 respectively. The index for the euro replicates the German deutsche mark before 1999, when Europe’s common currency started trading.

The New Zealand dollar index fell 0.2 percent to 50.14 today, the Swedish krona index climbed 0.1 percent to 52.89 and the Australia dollar index dropped 0.2 percent to 64.07.

Though the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, it doesn’t affect the movement of foreign-exchange rates as much as the euro, the indexes show. Since the euro’s creation, its correlation to other G-10 currencies has steadily risen, overtaking the dollar in 2004 and all others by December 2008.

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Australian bank lending rose by the most in 11 months, adding to signs of an economic rebound that may prompt central bank Governor Glenn Stevens to raise interest rates next week for a record fourth straight meeting.

Loans provided by banks and other finance companies advanced 0.3 percent in December from November, when they rose 0.1 percent, the Reserve Bank of Australia said in Sydney today. Lending increased 1.5 percent from a year earlier.

Today’s report may increase pressure on Stevens to boost the benchmark lending rate by a quarter percentage point to 4 percent as early as Feb. 2. The nation’s economy, which skirted the global recession in 2009, is forecast to accelerate this year, driven by a surge in consumer confidence and the biggest hiring boom in more than three years.

“It’s very heartening,” said Savanth Sebastian, an economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. “Consumers are quietly rejoicing in the improving economic environment and are a bit more willing to borrow and spend.”

Credit growth “will continue to track higher this year, and in the second half of the year business credit will start to strengthen,” he said.

The Australian dollar rose to 89.07 U.S. cents at noon in Sydney from 89 cents just before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield was unchanged at 4.22 percent.

Rate Bets

Traders are betting there is a 62 percent chance of a quarter-point increase in Australia’s overnight cash rate target to 4 percent at the central bank’s meeting next week, according to Bloomberg calculations based on interbank futures on the Sydney Futures Exchange at 11:58 a.m. Prior to today’s report, the chances of a move were 60 percent.

Lending in December rose three times more than the 0.1 percent median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Loans to consumers to buy houses climbed 0.7 percent from November and 8.2 percent from a year earlier.

Credit provided to consumers for purchases other than housing advanced 0.7 percent from a month earlier for an annual decline of 0.4 percent.

Demand for credit rose after employers added 135,700 jobs in the four months through December, the biggest four-month gain since 2006, pushing down the jobless rate to an eight-month low of 5.5 percent, a report showed on Jan. 14. Consumer confidence jumped in January by the most in six months, a survey by Westpac Banking Corp. showed last week.

The International Monetary Fund said this week that Australia’s gross domestic product will expand 2.5 percent this year and 3 percent in 2011. In October, it forecast 2 percent growth in 2010.

Lending to companies dropped 0.2 percent in December from the previous month, taking the annual decline to 7 percent, today’s report showed.

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SunPower Corp. hired Jim Pape to run its residential and commercial business group as part of a reorganization of responsibilities at the company.

Howard Wenger, to whom all SunPower’s business units previously reported, is now president of just the utilities and power plants business group.

The San Jose solar power company (NASDAQ: SPWRA) gave both Pape and Wenger greater responsibility for all profits and losses in their business units.

“Our new business groups have full responsibility for the business results for their groups, not just sales, or just construction,” said company spokeswoman Helen Kendrick no fax needed payday loans.

Pape’s position — president of residential and commercial — is a new job at the company. No one else was hired directly as part of the reorganization, Kendrick said, although existing employee teams will be assigned to the new business groups.

Pape worked previously at Trane Commercial Systems.

SunPower, led by CEO Tom Werner, has a large facility in the rehabbed Ford Point factory in Richmond.

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Here’s a conundrum for yield-seeking investors: What buys and then gets rid of stocks, behaves like a bond fund and is taxed like a stock fund?

Answer: A specialty fund that mimics the returns of a bond portfolio while spinning off capital gains.

Recent new offerings of these bond fund alternatives, both launched in November, include Claymore Advantaged Canadian Bond ETF (CAB/TSX) and Renaissance Corporate Bond Capital Yield. Similar financial engineering is occurring in the fixed-income portions of some balanced funds.

Simply put, here’s how interest is transformed into capital gains: First, the fund buys stocks. Then it sells the stock portfolio in what’s called a forward agreement.

The counterparty, commonly a bank, agrees to pay a future price that’s tied to the returns of a bond index or bond portfolio. This enables interest to be re-characterized as capital gains.

Som Seif, president of Claymore Investments Inc., says the returns of his firm’s exchange-traded fund are not related in any way to the equities that are bought and then sold forward. "The equities are only there for the purpose of providing the tax efficiency," Seif says.

If you’re investing in an RRSP or other registered account, your decision is simple. Avoid these funds, since there’s no advantage to receiving distributions in the form of capital gains. But in a taxable account, you’re better off receiving capital gains, which are not taxed as heavily as interest.

As the Claymore ETF’s prospectus warns, there are risks associated with derivatives. These include the risk that the counterparty in the forward agreement may default on its obligations.

However, such risks are low, since the fund managers generally deal with very creditworthy institutions. The Claymore ETF’s counterparty, for instance, is Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Taxes are always an important consideration when investing in a nonregistered account paydayloans. But the investment in a virtual bond fund must stand on its own merits, the risks should be understood by the investor and the fees should be reasonable.

The pioneer of this genre is Mackenzie Financial Corp.’s Mackenzie Sentinel Managed Return Class, first offered in March 2002. It’s not a pure play on fixed income, since Mackenzie portfolio manager Chris Kresic maintains a 10 per cent weighting in stocks to give the fund a little more growth potential. He sells forward all the rest of his stocks, using the proceeds to obtain bond exposure.

The fund’s performance has generally lagged that of Mackenzie Sentinel Bond, the more conventional fixed-income fund that Kresic runs. Over the past five years, the gap in returns is about 80 basis points (0.8 per cent) on an annualized basis.

Both funds have roughly the same management expense ratio, so MERs don’t explain the performance disparity. What has made a difference is contrasting bond exposures and counterparty costs.

Mackenzie Sentinel Managed Return is mostly exposed to Government of Canada bonds, which are lower-yielding than the corporate bonds that normally make up a substantial portion of the holdings of Mackenzie Sentinel Bond.

Also exerting a drag on the performance of the virtual bond fund are the fees charged by the counterparties to the forward agreements. These fees are reflected in the prices the counterparties are willing to pay for their forward purchases.

Though forward agreements don’t get factored into MERs, their effective cost would typically be in the range of 25 to 50 basis points. Investors take heed: This alone will offset some of the tax advantages of holding a bond fund substitute rather than the real thing.

rudy.luukko@morningstar.com

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Mergers are all the rage in Corporate America again. Healthy companies are looking to take advantage of their strong balance sheets and surging stock prices to strike while the iron is hot.

So far this month, Hewlett-Packard has agreed to buy 3Com, Stanley Works announced a deal for tool rival Black & Decker, and in the biggest deal of them all, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is taking over railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

But these strategic deals aren’t the only type of mergers that have made a comeback.

Private equity firms, the so-called "Masters of the Universe" or "Barbarians at the Gate" that became famous for taking over companies in the 80s, are starting to get more active as well.

On Thursday, Pinnacle Foods Group, which is owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group (BX), said it was buying frozen foods company Birds Eye for $1.3 billion.

Earlier this month, defense contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC, Fortune 500) agreed to sell its advisory services unit TASC to an investor group led by private equity firms General Atlantic Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for $1.65 billion. (KKR, of course, is the original Barbarian. Its takeover of RJR Nabisco in 1989 was the subject of the book "Barbarians at the Gate.")

Also this month, private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan teamed to buy prescription drug data provider IMS Health (RX) for $4 billion. That deal is the biggest leveraged buyout of the year.

The return of the Barbarians is worth noting. It could be yet another reflection of growing optimism about the economy. After all, private equity firms don’t often hold on to companies they buy for long.

The goal is usually to clean a company up and generate a healthy return by selling it to another company or bringing it public once again. If private equity firms are now willing to invest instead of sit on cash, they must see something they like.

"Private equity firms have raised a significant amount of money and they have to deploy that cash. So they are going to step up and make some investments," Haag Sherman, managing director with Salient Partners, an investment firm in Houston.

But there’s another reason why more LBOs could actually be good news.

Private equity shops tend to rely on debt to finance their takeovers. As such, their return to the M&A landscape could mean that the credit markets and the banking system really are starting to return to normal.

"The credit markets are no longer on life support. So that has led to stabilization in stocks and the economy, and that’s a good sign," Sherman said.

To that end, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, BofA Merrill Lynch, HSBC, and Macquarie Capital all kicked in debt financing to Blackstone for the Birds Eye deal.

Antony Page, a professor at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis who focuses on mergers and acquisitions and corporate law, said the comeback in private equity deals could be a refection that banks are willing to once again take on more risk and increase their lending.

But Page said it also shows that private equity firms are being more cautious and are not willing to throw large amounts of money at deals that may not make financial sense. Otherwise, banks would probably remain reluctant to back them.

"Private equity firms are being more selective and the deals are probably looking better for the banks. So banks can be more comfortable about financing them," he said.

Sherman stopped short of saying that the days of easy cheap money are here again. For many consumers, it is still difficult to get approval for a mortgage or a credit card.

Just because Blackstone can get money to buy Birds Eye doesn’t necessarily mean that banks are going to suddenly start making crazy subprime mortgage loans again.

And that’s a good thing. Another credit binge would prove that no lessons were learned from this recession and could set the stage for another nasty downturn.

Still, the latest results from the Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey of senior bank loan officers show that credit is not as tight as it was earlier this year.

According to that survey, released earlier this month, a smaller percentage of banks reported tighter standards for credit cards and other consumer loans than they did in July.

So as long as the economy doesn’t backslide into recession, it seems likely that some banks will be more willing to extend credit to those who need it and deserve it.

"There are good banks and bad banks. Some won’t have to hunker down and preserve capital, " Page said. "Standards won’t be as loose as they were. But there should be some hope for people who have good, if not great, credit and are still good credit risks."

Talkback: Do you think the credit markets have returned to normal? Share your comments below.  

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