What Caused the Credit Crisis?

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By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

State error led banks to ignore the lessons of history and overdose on too-cheap money, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Three years ago, the world's top watchdog warned that the global economy was veering out of control. Defending orthodoxy against the easy debt policies of the Greenspan era, the Bank for International Settlements said interest rates were being held too low for safety in most of the mature economies.


Credit crisis: Swept away by a tide of debt
America had embarked on an unprecedented experiment. The US savings rate had fallen to near zero for the first time since the Slump. The current account deficit had reached levels that were incompatible with the dollar's role as the anchor of the global system.

The rising powers of Asia were preventing adjustment by holding down their currencies, and flooding the world with cheap credit in the process. Incipient bubbles were ubiquitous. "Most industrial countries are showing symptoms of over-heating in the housing market," it said.


New-fangled securities were allowing banks to take "highly leveraged positions". It was unclear how these untested inventions would "handle a string of credit blow-ups".

"One simply cannot ignore the number of indicators that are now simultaneously exhibiting marked deviations," concluded the BIS. That was in June 2005.

Regrettably, governments did exactly that. They ignored manifest risks. Real interest rates were held near or below zero in the US and a large arc of Europe until well into 2006.

By then, the damage was done. US housing had succumbed to full-fledged mania. Variants were emerging - later in the cycle - across the Anglo-Saxon world, the Baltic, Club Med, and Eastern Europe.

What occurred was a fatal cocktail, a mix of too much and too little government intervention at the same time. Bureaucrats (central banks) held down the price of credit: other bureaucrats (regulators) turned a blind eye to the excesses that cheap money caused in mortgages and the "shadow banking system" - that $3 trillion nexus of structured credit. Northern Rock continued to offer 125pc mortgages. Honey-trap "teaser" loans continued to ensnare Americans.

Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan now says the world faces a "once or twice in a century event". Faith in the financial system has been called into question. Taxpayers will have to rescue more banks. Missing is any hint of apology for his role in incubating this crisis as monetary overlord for 20 years.

Where did it all go wrong? One could start by looking at the trajectory of total US debt, up from 130pc to 350pc of GDP since 1982. "We've had a 30-year leveraging up of America, ending in an unchecked orgy," said Charles Dumas, from Lombard Street Research.

"The final straw was the Fed's hopelessly slow tightening from 2004 onwards. There was no excuse for the interest rates of 1pc, and then they went through this ludicrous metronome dance of quarter-point hikes," he said.

Mr Dumas said the fuel for the third-stage blast of the US debt rocket came from Asia's "savings glut". China, Taiwan, Vietnam and other exporters have built up huge surpluses by holding down their currencies through dollar pegs or "dirty floats".

Together with Russia and the Mid-East petro-powers, they have accumulated a war chest of some $6 trillion in reserves. This must be recycled into foreign assets. Most went into US and European bonds, pushing down the cost of long-term capital for the entire global system.

On top of this, roughly $250bn a year fled zero-interest rates in Japan to chase better returns abroad through the "carry trade". Japan's emergency stimulus leaked everywhere.

The ensuing bond bubble depressed yields for pension funds and insurers obliged to buy "AAA" assets, leaving them struggling to match their long-term liabilities. They were easy prey when the sharks came along with sub-prime debt "sliced and diced" into irresistible blocks of "AAA" securities, promising high yields.


Rules made matters worse. Professor Peter Spencer, from York University, said the Basle code on capital adequacy ratios caused a perverse side-effect. "By making banks raise capital against their balance sheets, it gave them a strong incentive to move off balance sheets," he said.

The Fed could have done a great deal to offset the tsunami of Asian money by squeezing liquidity at home. It chose not to do so. Mr Greenspan and his protégé, Ben Bernanke, saw no need to act because inflation was tamed.

Cheap Asian goods flooded the world, keeping a lid on inflation in the West. It lulled the central banking fraternity into a false sense of security. As they slept, the excess money found its way into asset booms. This was the "Great Error".

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Read Part Three

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