"Ten years ago, the global economy teetered in the face of a classic financial panic, the most dangerous type of financial crisis. In a financial panic, investors lose confidence in all forms of credit, retreating to the safest and most liquid assets, like Treasury bills. The prices of risky assets collapse, and new credit becomes unavailable, with dire consequences for workers, homeowners and savers. The seeds of the panic were sown over decades, as the American financial system 'outgrew' [sarcastic emphasis mine] the protections against panics that were put in place after the Great Depression. Depression-era safeguards, like deposit insurance, were aimed at ensuring that the banking system remained stable, but by 2007 more than half of all credit flowed outside banks. Financial innovations, like subprime mortgages and automated credit scoring, helped millions to buy homes, but they also facilitated unwise risk-taking by lenders and investors. Most dangerously, trillions of dollars of risky credit were financed by uninsured, short-term funding..." What We Need To Fight the Next Financial Crisis by the Unholy Trinity of Policy Errors and Moral Hazard
