People who get into debt trouble, commonplace in Japan's moribund economy, also sometimes hire them as muscle to get creditors to extend easier terms.
Like his father and grandfather, he extended easy credit to important benefactors.
Over the last few years, these big banks extended easy money for credit card, mortgage, and home equity loans.
Talk of extended easy money can help the economy now precisely because it makes the Fed sound like it's not a conventionally-minded central bank, eager to snatch away the punch bowl; even asset purchases work mainly because they reinforce that impression of unconventionality.
Retail chains like La Polar in Chile and Casas Bahia in Brazil, which sell electronics and housewares, have thrived by offering relatively low-priced goods and extending easy credit terms to entire classes of people who had never had access to it.
Not try to extend an easy, moderately successful four years into an easy, moderately successful eight years.
The figures show that while the E.C.B. has relieved the immediate financial pressures on both governments and banks by making it easy for them to borrow, it has not managed to extend that easy credit to those who need money the most.
In fact, it convinced some traders that the Fed could extend its easy money policies beyond next year.
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou's plan to extend the easy brand into food retailing has received a setback after a London council rejected his easyFoodstore launch plans [see footnote].
"The investment from the EIB accelerates our ability to expand our product capabilities and continue to develop features that make MariaDB the easiest to use, the easiest to extend and the easiest to deploy in any environment," he said in a statement.
All the while investors are anxiously wondering if and when the Federal Reserve will enter the bond market, buying long-term Treasuries in an effort to extend its easy-money policy.
