There is substantial evidence that insufficient dietary protein intake is deleterious for bone health, but there is a strong debate as to whether an excess of dietary protein may be associated with osteoporosis. It has long been known that increasing dietary protein increases urinary calcium excretion. Until recently, the prevailing view was that bone was the source of the extra urinary calcium excreted during a high-protein diet. Several reviews have summarized the complex literature on the potential impact on bone of dietary protein. One mechanism by which high dietary protein could induce bone loss may be related to the acid load generated by the protein metabolism. While renal metabolism represents the principal mechanism by which fixed metabolic acid loads are handled by the body, renal buffering may be incomplete, particularly with aging. Under those circumstances, the skeleton may be calledon to act as a buffer to neutralize acid generated from high-protein diets. Liberation of buffer from bone comes at the expense of mineral dissolution and ultimately bone loss. Even mild acidosis could have profound effects: if bone is mobilized to buffer only 1 mEq of acid each day, 15% of the total body calcium in an average person would be lost in a decade. This theory has recently been challenged, in particular following a series of short-term experimental studies that suggested that dietary protein might influence calcium intestinal absorption, and that most of the extra urinary calcium excreted during a high-protein diet originate from the intestine rather than from bone.7 However, the relative contribution of diet and bone to protein-induced calciuria remains controversial, and the long-term impact of high protein diets on bone health is still unclear.
Results of observational epidemiological studies have not helped to clarify the nature of the effect of high dietary protein intakes on the skeleton. Numerous studies showed a positive association with bone mass,10-14 but others showed no association,15, 16 while others still showed a negative association with at least one bone site.17-19 Fewer studies have evaluated the effect of protein intake on fracture risk. Two of them found a decreased risk of fracture with higher protein intake,20, 21 while three others showed an opposite trend, in particular with proteins from animal sources.
There has been a great deal of concern expressed about the rising levels of overall consumer debt. Government evidence showed that, in August 2004, household borrowing in Britain rose above £1 trillion for the first time. As interest rates remain at a relatively low level, higher debt repayments may well be affordable for many households. However, there is increasing concern that consumers in the UK are taking on unmanageable amounts of debt, which may well become of greater concern if the current upward trend in interest rates is maintained or if the currently benign macroeconomic climate takes a turn for the worse. Yet, at the same time, even a casual observer of the financial scene in the UK will have been struck by the increased marketing of products – including mortgages and remortgages, car loans and debt consolidation loans – specifically to people who have an impaired credit record or who are finding their existing debt difficult to manage. It might be predicted that such borrowers would be particularly vulnerable to unmanageable debt. As relatively recent arrivals on the financial scene, however, little has been written about this so-called ‘sub-prime’ lending sector outside the confines of the specialist financial press.
The research that is reported here is the first attempt to bring together and present more broadly evidence about the development of and activities within the sub-prime lending sector in the UK. As well as presenting a general picture of the sector, the research is also more specifically motivated by the impact of such activities on the sustainability of home ownership – as many of the loans are targeted specifically at the owner-occupied sector and secured against property, in the event of any default or arrears, the ultimate penalty is house repossession.
The past two decades have witnessed a spate of financial crises around the world. Caprio and Klingebiel (2003) document 112 episodes of systemic banking crises in 93 countries and another 51 borderline instances of banking crises in 46 countries. Economies that have experienced systemic crises require a substantial and expensive overhaul of their banking system. The intermittent occurrence of financial crises provides the impetus for a careful analysis of the roots of a financial crisis and the design of effective policies for the resolution of the crisis.
The causes of the Asian crisis have been analyzed extensively, but relatively few studies have evalu ated the impact of bank restructuring policies on bank share prices in the distressed economies, and other countries with exposure to the crisis-hit countries. This study differs from the existing literature, in that it aims to assess the impact of the restructuring policies using a two-tier analysis of wealth effects and operational performance of banks in the countries studied. We attempt to provide an assessment of the early bank restructuring efforts in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. Additionally, while most studies estimate only the aggregate impact of policy responses to the crisis in the banking sector, our model, by monitoring changes in banking indices estimates abnormal returns for each bank. Drawing upon a study by Klingebiel et al. (2001) we compare the impact of different restructuring announcements on bank shareholders wealth.
