Chart 1. The title is The Corporate Financing Gap and C&I Lending Are Correlated. A line graph shows Four-Quarter Moving Average Financing Gap (in millions of dollars). Another line graph shows C&I loans (in billions of dollars). The time period ranges from 1985 to 2004.

The financing gap dipped and rose many times but remained between $2,000 million and $21,000 million from 1986 to fourth-quarter 1994. It peaked at over $30,000 million in 1995, dipped below $14,000 million in 1996, and then rose steeply to almost $87,600 million by the end of 2000. By the end of 2003 it had plunged to $–12,600 million.

C&I loans also remained steady between $500 billion and $600 billion until 1996 when they began a steady rise to over $1,000 billion in 2000 and 2001. Since then they have dropped slightly to $865 billion.