For instance, even creditworthy municipal authorities could benefit from assistance in meeting the requirements of accessing bond markets.

Starting off with 500 Self Help Groups , it now had 1.6 million groups (or 24.2 million families) that were creditworthy.

SMEs in the distribution sector have difficulty in securing credit because of their organizational weaknesses, and also because they are not deemed to be creditworthy.

This creates a new million car a year market for Detroit from customers they weren't going to get otherwise, because they weren't creditworthy and could never afford a new car.

Another would be for Governments or donors to provide home loan insurance in order to encourage housing finance institutions to offer mortgages to otherwise not creditworthy low income borrowers on affordable terms.

However, it is often the constraints that they face in other areas that cause them not to be deemed creditworthy (e.g. they are dependent on erratic international market prices and on weather conditions).

They could not stop the Greek government from borrowing (indirectly) from the European Central Bank (ECB) as long as credit rating agencies deemed Greek debt creditworthy. If Greece chooses default, they cannot enforce their banks claims on Greek borrowers or seize Greek assets.

The rationale or perhaps we should call it ideology behind supporting big banks is that they are needed for the economy to recover. But this position looks increasingly doubtful when the banks are sitting on piles of cash while creditworthy consumers and businesses are reluctant to borrow.

Not only do these farmers then feed their families, but they also can begin to earn market income and to save for the future. By building up savings over a few years, the farmers eventually become creditworthy, or have enough cash to purchase vitally necessary inputs on their own.

The new margin requirements for derivatives, introduced in order to reduce systemic risk, are one example of such a chokepoint. It might make sense to apply them to banks or hedge funds, but pension funds are highly creditworthy institutions that pose little or no systemic risk to financial markets.

Similarly, in 2011, Spanish banks increased their lending to the government by almost 15 , even though private sector lending contracted and the Spanish government became less creditworthy. A senior Italian banker once said that Italian banks would be hanged by the Ministry of Finance if they sold any of their government debt holdings.

But EU rules on national bank resolution will not yet be in force, while the eurozone s single resolution mechanism will be initiated only in 2015. So banks in northern Europe that are still backed by creditworthy governments would be treated differently than those in cash strapped southern Europe Germany can afford to bail out its banks