Leverage What Leverage A Deep Dive Into The U S Flow Of Funds In Search Of Clues To The Global Crisis

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.

Extraordinary growth of the financial relative to the nonfinancial sector has marked the development of mature capitalism during the last four decades. The changing balance between the two sectors has altered the outlook of the economy and facilitated the spread of financial concerns, practices, and outlooks across society. The result has been the gradual transformation of contemporary capitalism – namely, its financialization since the late 1970s. There are similarities between the Marxian, the Post-Keynesian and other heterodox approaches to analyzing the profound changes in money and finance in the global economy since the 1980s. Prominent among them is a common focus on financialization but also on the limits of monetary policy, the transformation of banking, the tendency to crisis related to financial excess, and the problematic role of neoliberalism in finance. Furthermore, the complexity of the interrelationship between finance and the rest of the economy has increased since the great crisis of 2007-9. This book tackles several of these developments as well as engaging in debate among different currents of heterodox economics. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Japanese Political Economy.

This paper exploits the Financial Accounts of the United States to derive long time series of bank and nonbank credit to different sectors, and to examine the cyclical behavior of these series in relation to (i) the long-term business cycle, (ii) recessions and recoveries, and (iii) systemic financial crises. We find that bank and nonbank credit exhibit different dynamics throughout the business cycle. This diverging cyclical behavior of output and bank and nonbank credit argues for placing greater emphasis on sector-specific macroprudential measures to contain risks to the financial system, rather than using interest rates to address any vulnerabilities. Finally, we examine the role of bank and nonbank credit in the creation of financial interconnections and illustrate a method to conduct macro-financial stability assessments.

In Finance Capital Today, François Chesnais analyses the specific features of contemporary capitalism, notably its truly global nature and its financialisation, calling on Marxist analyses of the concentration, centralisation and globalisation of capital and Marx’s theory of interest-bearing and fictitious capital.

The research summaries in the September 2012 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin are "Surges in Capital Flows: Why History Repeats Itself" (by Mahvash S. Qureshi) and "The LIC-BRIC Linkage: Growth Spillovers" (by Issouf Samake, Yongzheng Yang, and Catherine Pattillo). The Q&A covers "Seven Questions on Monetary Transmission in Low-Income Countries" (by Prachi Mishra and Peter Montiel). "Conversations with a Visiting Scholar" features an interview with IMF Fellow Olivier Coibion. Also included in this issue are details on the IMF Fellowship Program, visiting scholars at the IMF, a listing of recently published IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes, and an announcement on IMF Economic Review's first Impact Factor.

The October 2012 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) finds increased risks to the global financial system, with the euro area crisis the principal source of concern, and urges policymakers to act now to restore confidence, reverse capital flight, and reintegrate the euro zone. This GFSR presents a report on whether regulatory reforms are moving the financial system in the right direction, and finds that progress has been limited, partly because many reforms are in the early stages of implementation and partly because crisis intervention methods are still in use in a number of economies, delaying the movement of the financial system onto a safer path. The final chapter examines whether certain aspects of financial structure enhance economic outcomes. Indeed, some structural features are associated with better outcomes. In particular, financial buffers made up of high-quality capital and truly liquid assets tend to be associated with better economic performance.