A fate worse than debt

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: It is ugly, but deleveraging is the word of the moment. Financial institutions, desperate to repair the damage inflicted on their balance-sheets by mortgage-related securities, sell assets. In doing so, they exacerbate the problem. Forced sales push down the prices of assets, worsening the balance-sheets of other investors, forcing more asset sales, and soon. In the end, the government is the only entity left in the game with a balance-sheet strong enough to keep buying.

The Bush administration’s bail-out plan, even if it gets through Congress, may not be the end of the finance industry’s problems. The travails of investment banks will inevitably cause problems for hedge funds, which depend for their finances on institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Many hedge funds have already cut positions since the credit crunch started in the summer of 2007, and banks have tightened the terms on which they will do business with them. This has been particularly true for those that sought funding through the prime-brokerage arms of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers before they were wiped out.

The volatility of financial markets may intensify the pain, since both brokers and hedge funds use models which lead them to sell assets when prices move down sharply. Some hedge funds may have to give up altogether. Around 15% more were liquidated in the first half of 2008 than in the first half of 2007, according to Hedge Fund Research, a consultancy.

What hurts finance affects the rest of the economy in spades. Tim Bond, of Barclays Capital, reckons that, thanks to the gearing effect, a shortfall of bank capital of around $170 billion may reduce the potential supply of credit by $1.7 trillion.

A cut in overall lending would be a complete reversal of trend. Morgan Stanley reckons that total American debt (ie, the gross debt of households, companies and the government) has risen inexorably since 1980 to more than 300% of GDP (see chart), higher than it was in the Depression. Consumers were encouraged to borrow by low unemployment and interest rates and (until last year) rising asset prices. Their debt jumped from 71% of GDP in 2000 to 100% in 2007, a bigger increase in seven years than in the previous 20.