Rather than a regional bank in the US, for instance, holding a dangerously undiversified holding of credit ex-posures in that particular region, which created the danger of a self-reinforcing cycle between the decline in a regional economy and the decline in the capital capacity of regional banks, it was much better to package up the loans and sell them through to a diversified group of end investors. Securitised credit intermediation could reduce risks for the whole banking system, since while some of the credit risk would be held by the originating bank and some by other banks acting as investors, much would be passed through to end non-bank investors. Credit
losses would therefore be less likely to produce banking system failure. However, that is not what happened. When the crisis struck, and as figures from the IMF Global Financial Stability Report of April 2008 made clear, the majority of the holdings of securitised credit, and the vast majority of the losses which arose, did not lie in the books of end investors intending to hold the assets to maturity, but on the books of highly leveraged banks and bank-like institutions.