Financial Markets Regulation: Financial Crisis Highlights Need to Improve Oversight of Leverage at Financial Institutions and Across System

摘要

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act directed GAO to study the role of leverage in the current financial crisis and federal oversight of leverage. GAO's objectives were to review (1) how leveraging and deleveraging by financial institutions may have contributed to the crisis, (2) regulations adopted by federal financial regulators to limit leverage and how regulators oversee compliance with the regulations, and (3) any limitations the current crisis has revealed in regulatory approaches used to restrict leverage and regulatory proposals to address them. To meet these objectives, GAO built on its existing body of work, reviewed relevant laws and regulations and academic and other studies, and interviewed regulators and market participants. Some studies suggested that leverage steadily increased in the financial sector before the crisis, and deleveraging by financial institutions may have contributed to the crisis. As the crisis is complex, no single theory is likely to fully explain what occurred or rule out other explanations. The crisis has reinforced the need to focus greater attention on systemic risk. With multiple regulators responsible for individual markets or institutions, none has clear responsibility to assess the potential effects of the buildup of systemwide leverage or the collective activities of institutions to deleverage.