The Fed is Twice As Leveraged As Lehman Was
Byhe 2008 Crisis was caused by too much debt/ leverage, particularly in the form of illiquid derivatives (mortgage backed securities get the most attention, but the derivatives market was well over $800 trillion at the time of the crisis).
To combat the financial crisis, the Fed did three things:
1) Cut rates to zero.
2) Abandon accounting standards.
3) Engage in Quantitative Easing/ QE.
None of these policies represented “solutions” to the crisis. In fact, you couldn’t even accurately argue that they represented “containment.” What the Fed did was permit the very cancerous securities that nearly imploded the Wall Street banks to spread beyond from the private sector onto the public’s balance sheet…
The Fed is Twice As Leveraged As Lehman Was
