Leverage? What Leverage? A Deep Dive into the U.S. Flow of Funds in Search of Clues to the Global Crisis.
Title:
Leverage? What Leverage? A Deep Dive into the U.S. Flow of Funds in Search of Clues to the Global Crisis.
Author:
Bayoumi, Tamim.
ISBN:
9781475597608
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (31 pages)
Series:
IMF Working Papers
Contents:
Cover -- Contents -- Glossary -- Executive Summary -- I. Introduction: Our Search for the Smoking Gun -- II. The Flow of Funds Accounts: From the Macro to the Financial -- A. Nonfinancial Private Sector Net Worth: A Rational Gambit -- B. Household Finances: Let the Good Times Roll -- C. Nonfinancial Business Finances: The Cash Cow -- D. Government Finances: Use that Firepower -- E. Foreign Investors in the U.S. Credit Markets: Pay to Play -- F. Gross and Net Credit Growth: Strong for Long -- G. Financial Sector Size and "Churning" Activity: Inward We Look -- H. Financial Sector Structure and "Shadow Banking": Brave New World -- I. Private-Label Securitization: Bankruptcy-Remote Indeed -- J. The Secured Wholesale Funding Chain: In Collateral We Trust -- III. Conclusion: Investment Banks as the Fulcrum -- References -- Figures -- 1. Leverage? What Leverage? -- 2. Was it Debtor Leverage? -- 3. Was it Households as Net Debtors? -- 4. Was it a Borrowing Spree by Firms? -- 5. Was it Foreigners Buying U.S. Treasuries? -- 6. Was it Foreigners Buying Everything? -- 7. Was it Credit Growth? -- 8. Was it Financial Sector Size? -- 9. Was it "Shadow Banking"? -- 10. Was it the Bundling? -- 11. Was it the Funding Model? -- 12. In Summary.
Abstract:
This paper questions the view that leverage should have forewarned us of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, pointing to several gearing indicators that were neither useful portents of the onset of the crisis nor of its ferocity. Instead it shows, first, that the use of ill-suited collateral in the secured funding operations of U.S.-based investment banks was the fatal link between the collapse of structured finance and the global malfunction of funding markets that turbocharged the downdraft; and, second, that this insight (and others) can be decrypted from the Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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