Photo credit: Jon Gos

Too often in debates regarding the recent financial crisis, the event was regarded as a surprise that no one could have anticipated, conveniently forgetting those who pointed out sloppy banking, lending and borrowing practices in advance of the crisis.  There is a need for a well-developed model of how a financial crisis works, so that the wrong cures are not applied to the financial system.

All that said, any correct cure will bring about a predictable response from the banks and other lending institutions.  They will argue that borrower choice is reduced, and that the flow of credit and liquidity to the financial system is also reduced.  That is not a big problem in the boom phase of the financial cycle, because those same measures help to avoid a loss of liquidity and credit availability in the bust phase of the cycle.  Too much liquidity and credit is what fuels eventual financial crises.

To get to a place where we could have a decent model of the state of overall financial credit, we would have to have models that work like this: