The Mass Dislocation in Credit Markets
To appreciate the banking environment today, a brief
review of history is needed. In the years leading up to the
most recent economic recession, the U.S. experienced a
housing boom driven by low interest rates, easy credit and
overly accommodative underwriting practices. Many large
financial companies engaged in the complex packaging of
debt instruments that leveraged the U.S. financial system to
extreme levels.
One way to understand the extreme risk is to look at the
balance sheet of the largest U.S. financial institutions as if
they were one company. At the end of the third quarter of
2008, these institutions were leveraged almost 40-to-1, with
$7 trillion in illiquid securities and loans financed to a large
extent with short-term, variable-rate borrowings.1
When the housing bubble burst, vulnerabilities were
exposed. Many financial companies faced capital shortfalls
and, ultimately, failed or were forced to merge.
Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy in September 2008 elevated the
panic in the markets. In a series of articles on the effects of
the financial crisis, The Economist described it in this manner: