As a consequence, the firm’s liquidity pool dropped by 83 percent in a two-day span.1 These liquidity dynamics were driven by two main factors. The first factor was the underlying stress on dealer balance sheets as the prices on complex collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), private label residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), and commercial real estate-related assets fell sharply and uncertainty about underlying asset values rose sharply. The uncertainty stemmed, in part, from the lack of transparency about what prices these assets could be sold for, which, in turn stemmed from the difficulty of valuing these extremely complex and heterogeneous securities. The stress on underlying asset prices and the uncertainty about the valuations of pools of illiquid assets caused investors to become concerned about the solvency of some of the weaker dealers.2 These concerns contributed to liquidity pressures, which, in turn, led to forced asset sales by dealers and others. These sales both further depressed asset prices and increased asset price volatility. The second factor contributing to the liquidity crisis was the dependence of dealers on shortterm funding to finance illiquid assets. This short-term funding came mainly from two sources, the tri-party repo system and customer balances in prime brokerage accounts. By relying on these sources of funding, dealers were much more vulnerable to runs than was generally appreciated. Consider first tri-party repo, a market in which money market funds, securities lending operations, and other institutions finance assets mainly on an overnight basis.
However, the decision-making system in the United States is constructed in a way that makes it difficult to take the necessary type of decision. Moreover, my impression is that the problems with the public finance deficit are underestimated in the United States to the extent that they believe growth will resolve much of the problems. On the other hand, they have now decided on certain budget-strengthening measures and the United States usually succeeds in managing difficult problems in the end. The sovereign debt problems in the euro area are actually smaller than the US problems. The deficit in public finances in the euro area is calculated by the IMF to correspond to around 4 per cent of GDP this year. All in all, there is thus less need of budget strengthening measures in the euro area than in the United States and the tightening effects need not be so great. But the deficit is unevenly distributed and some countries have very large deficits and/or national debts. The problem is that even in Europe it appears to be difficult to reach decisions on credible long-term programmes for consolidating public finances. Instead, many countries have been forced by the markets to decide on further budget strengthening during the summer to increase confidence. However, even if the sovereign debt problems in the United States and the euro area are essentially the same, the market turbulence may lead to the situation deteriorating.