Prior to the crisis, these institutions had become increasingly dependent on various forms of short-term wholesale funding, as had some globally active commercial banks. Examples of such funding include commercial paper, repurchase agreements (repos), and securities lending.
In the years immediately before the crisis, some of these forms of funding grew especially rapidly; for example, repo liabilities of U.S. brokerdealers increased by a factor of 2–1/2 in the four years before the crisis, and a good deal of this expansion reportedly funded holdings of relatively less liquid securities.