The sums involved are not trivial: at the end of June 2013 insurers, occupational pension funds, money market funds and investment funds together had assets worth almost 16 trillion euros – that is only a trillion euros less than the sum of euro bank deposits. Of course, only a small fraction of these funds could be expected to be allocated towards securitisation.
Interesting alternative models, like Porter’s P-star model, are useful because they give yet another perspective on the likely evolution of a critical macroeconomic variable and thus provide a check on other forecasts that one might have in hand.