Alberto Giovannini Luigi Spaventa 7.Nov.2007
www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/690
....In its unfolding, this crisis conforms to the textbook paradigm. In a financial system where intermediaries hold illiquid assets against liquid liabilities, there are two possible equilibria. When only those agents subject to liquidity shocks require the service from intermediaries, the latter are able to carry out maturity transformation and allow society to earn superior returns. When instead, as a result of a shock, all agents, simultaneously but independently, seek liquidity, the intermediaries’ balance sheets go under stress, there is no demand for less liquid assets and disruptive liquidations may threaten financial stability: a succinct description of what has happened between July and September.
As noted by Mervyn King,1 the “most unusual nature” of this crisis was the disproportion between the shock (“a relatively small size of…bad loans compared with the total assets of the banks”) and its widespread systemic consequences. Echoing Mervyn King, Ben Bernanke wondered how the impact could be so large, comparing the US subprime mortgage market with “the enormous scale of global financial markets”.2 True, also in the textbook model, “crisis“ equilibria may be triggered by potentially insignificant events. But according to the textbook prescriptions, undesirable outcomes can be avoided through informed supervisory action: supervisors possessing the relevant information regarding potential exposures to shocks are better able to prevent a crisis, thereby reassuring all market participants that threats to financial instabilities can be contained. When, on the other hand, market participants not only do not know how serious and widespread the impact of a dislocation is, but also become aware that the supervisory authorities are no less ignorant, they rationally cut their risk positions by more than would be warranted if they possessed greater information and could rely on the presence of a better-informed coordinating agent. The surge in volatility and the drying-up of liquidity make the worst scenario self-fulfilling.
This is, in our view, what has happened this time. A generalised lack of information multiplied the effects of the initial shock........