And because the LaGrange plant is now diverting methane away from the atmosphere, and because methane is a much more powerful heat-trapper than carbon dioxide, "those credits set off all of our activities in North America," Mr. Jones said.
In a liquidity crisis, as we have seen all too recently, a sudden tightening of credit sets off a vicious cycle of margin calls that lead to forced sales, which in turn cause asset prices to plunge, and so on.
For Brazil's big sugar companies the timing is perfect: the credit crunch set off a wave of consolidation in an industry that had been resistant to it.
Central banks in Europe, the United States and Australia also pumped cash into the system in the face of credit fears set off by the subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States.
The fall of the world's largest insurance company began in the autumn of 2008, when a sudden downgrade in its credit worthiness set off something like a bank run.
The speech came a day before the Federal Reserve is expected to reduce interest rates in response to strains on the economy growing in part out of a credit squeeze set off by problems in the mortgage market.
The finance leaders from the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada warned that global growth could continue to slow as a result of the credit crisis set off by America's subprime mortgage problems.
Redstone's credit troubles set off a chain reaction with damaging consequences for CBS and Viacom.
But even for its most useful function — spotting identity theft — credit monitoring is not foolproof, because evidence doesn't always appear on credit reports or set off an alert.
While the credit crunch did set off the crisis, it exposed a host of problems that had been masked by a decade of easy growth.
