IMF Working Papers

Leverage? What Leverage? A Deep Dive into the U.S. Flow of Funds in Search of Clues to the Global Crisis

Author/Editor:

Tamim Bayoumi ; Ashok Vir Bhatia

Publication Date:

June 1, 2012

Electronic Access:

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Summary:

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.

Series:

Working Paper No. 2012/162

Subject:

Commercial banks Credit Financial sector Flow of funds Securities