FCIs, in particular, can facilitate story-telling. They have also been able to broadly track the most salient, yet not all, phases of the recent crisis.2 Overall, they show a positive trend in financial conditions since 2009, reflecting the policy response to the crisis.
This was preceded however by a tightening in financial conditions in 2007 and 2008 on the back of investor panic and contagion effects that spilled over across the entire array of asset prices at the height of the crisis.