[...] They now hold assets, such as hedge fund and private equity investments, with much concealed leverage. And many companies have transferred the risk of bad investment performance from their shareholders to savers – and savers are not usually well-equipped to deal with them.
The result: the risk of a sudden banking collapse, which almost happened 10 years ago, has reduced. But the risk of social crisis, as people enter retirement without enough money, is rising.
How did we get here? Central banks embarked on what is now known as “QE”. The initials stand for quantitative easing, and stand for the policy of buying government and mortgage-backed bonds, which was done to drive down their yields, stave off deflation and encourage investors to take risks.
The US Federal Reserve was the most aggressive user of QE at first. After the initial programme, which was widely seen as a necessary measure to combat the crisis, it held a second round of QE in 2010, and a controversial third round in 2012 – dubbed QE Infinity – which was to go on indefinitely. The European Central Bank was more reluctant, and tried to reduce its balance sheet after the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, before finally embarking on aggressive asset purchases as the eurozone lurched toward outright deflation. Most recently, the Bank of Japan has been the most enthusiastic QE central bank, and has even bought equities, as well as bonds.
The central banks wanted to create space for deleveraging; buying back debt would allow others to pay down their own debts. Banks themselves are now less leveraged. But in the US, other forms of leverage soon started to increase again. Mortgage debt is back roughly where it was on the verge of the crisis, while corporate debt has risen sharply as companies took advantage of low interest rates to retire equity and replace it with debt. The volume of auto loans and student debt have shot up, while consumers are starting to leverage up once more.
Pensions loomed as a serious social issue long before the financial crisis. That crisis, and the 10 years of desperate economic measures that followed, have deepened the risk that the next generation will retire without enough to support themselves.
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