This is not to say that lending officers are uninterested in risk management but rather that their focus is on finding a way to make the loan. In a world of judgment, the risk manager had considerable difficulty in persuading lending officers, indeed management, about excessive risk when quantitative procedures and systems did not exist. Differences in judgment are difficult to resolve.
That is probably the reason that bank credit availability has historically demonstrated a clear cyclical pattern that is consistent with the credit-making decision process I have just described and that, in turn, has exacerbated real economic cycles.