Five Years After Lehman, BIS Ex-Chief Economist Warns “It’s Worse This Time”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
09/15/2013
The froth is back. As we noted yesterday, corporate leverage has never been higher – higher now than when the Fed warned of froth, and as the BIS (following their “party’s over” rant 3 months ago) former chief economist now warns, “this looks like to me like 2007 all over again, but even worse.” The share of “leveraged loans” or extreme forms of credit risk, used by the poorest corporate borrowers, has soared to an all-time high of 45% – 10 percentage points higher than at the peak of the crisis in 2007. As The Telegraph reports, ex-BIS Chief Economist William White exclaims, “All the previous imbalances are still there. Total public and private debt levels are 30pc higher as a share of GDP in the advanced economies than they were then, and we have added a whole new problem with bubbles in emerging markets that are ending in a boom-bust cycle.” Crucially, the BIS warns, nobody knows how far global borrowing costs will rise as the Fed tightens or “how disorderly the process might be… the challenge is to be prepared.” This means, in their view, “avoiding the tempatation to believe the market will remain liquid under stress – the illusion of liquidity.”
The Rest…HERE
