The point at which credit risk becomes exchange rate redenomination risk is ambiguous.

Credit risk is best hedged through diversification across uncorrelated credits.

Credit risk in the mortgage market is being assumed by the government, and market risk by the Fed.

But, if more risk builds up through continued expansion of shadow credit, this risk buffer may become inadequate.

The spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology poses a particularly dangerous risk.

While credit expansion can offset this to some degree, increased production based on credit expansion inevitably leads to large scale financial risk.

New ways to borrow and to spread risk seemed to have little downside.

By helping to spread risk, high tech finance could help economies grow faster.

Indeed, a chain of financial intermediaries now earn fees without bearing the credit risk.

This risk was highlighted by the recent downgrade of Italy s credit rating by Standard Poor s.

In the past, banks kept loans and mortgages on their books, retaining the credit risk.

This design helped spread the earthquake risk from Japan to foreign investors, who could accept the risk and were enticed by higher expected yields.

They range from subdued bank lending to unusually high risk aversion, and from discredited credit vehicles to the withdrawal of some institutions from credit intermediation altogether.

With the government assuming credit risk, mortgages become as safe as government bonds of comparable maturity.

This would, in its turn, allow banks and other lenders to better assess enterprise risks using modern ICT based techniques for credit risk assessment and credit scoring.

Similarly, positioning the IMF as a general risk insurer by introducing precautionary credit lines above normal access limits would be compatible neither with its mission to provide financial assistance on deliberately non risk adjusted terms nor with the current system of refinancing short term Fund credit through risk free official reserves.

Even if this sounds unfair, it is logical to expect rating agencies, which had been lax in evaluating credit risk, now to be rigorous in assessing all forms of risk, including sovereign risk.

In other words, the Fed will use regulatory instruments to control credit growth, risk taking, and leverage.

First, the spread between banks borrowing rate and the zero risk rate has been climbing since July.

Clarifying ultimate responsibility for credit quality and risk would also reduce intermediation costs by eliminating the need to resort to informal channels, such as credit guarantee and trust companies.

It led directly to the spread of financial risk management models, which, by excluding the possibility of default, grossly underestimated the amount of risk in the system.

Innovative financial instruments such as derivatives and credit default swaps enabled the distribution of risk throughout the economy.

As a result, the CDO market did not so much spread risk as it shifted and hid it.

The New Yorkers still live in their own homes, but now they have spread their investment risk worldwide.

The spread of bankruptcies triggered a severe credit crunch, which triggered a deep recession and with it a brutal rise in unemployment.

Investors thus assumed that they did not need to assess the credit risk of eurozone countries (national) public debt.

The derivatives market certainly helps spread risk more widely than this superficial calculation implies, but the basic point stands.

Then panic spread to credit markets, money markets, and currency markets, highlighting the vulnerabilities of many developing countries financial systems and corporate sectors, which had experienced credit booms and had borrowed short and in foreign currencies.

The immediate causes are well known. They range from subdued bank lending to unusually high risk aversion, and from discredited credit vehicles to the withdrawal of some institutions from credit intermediation altogether.

Like banks, all these financial institutions are subject to liquidity or rollover risk the risk of going belly up if their creditors do not rollover their short term credit lines.

There is now a serious risk of a systemic meltdown in US financial markets as huge credit and asset bubbles collapse.

Germany will look like a better credit risk, thereby allowing it to fund its current budget deficits more easily and cheaply.

Meanwhile, prolonged low interest rates contributed to a chase for yield in the financial sector that resulted in disregard of credit risk.

Insurance companies and pension funds, on the other hand, have limited capacity for credit risk, but more for market and liquidity risks.

The spread of nuclear technology and the growing risk of nuclear terrorism make it imperative that we get it right this time.

Campaigns reached over 5 million children, while the restoration of routine immunization has been crucial for minimizing the risk of disease spread.

In most developing countries, financial service providers are not yet in a position to use modern credit risk management techniques to assess borrowers' risk and thus competitively provide capital, particularly trade finance, to enterprises.

But, as local government debt grows, Chinese banks have begun to regard real estate and local financing platforms as a major credit risk.

Credit rating agencies, institutional investors, and asset managers are encouraged to see how such factors can be incorporated into their own risk models.

The Italians and Spaniards are right the principal reason for the size of the spread between the periphery and Germany is convertibility risk.

We know, or at least we ought to know, how to build political institutions that accept the mission of macroeconomic stabilization, and how to build financial institutions to mobilize risk bearing capacity and spread risk.

Banks and other financial firms borrow short increasingly in recent years from the commercial securities market, not deposits and lend long at higher interest rates, taking on both credit risk (of default) and interest rate risk.

The problem may be that there are not many investors who want to take a long position on oil and Nigerian credit risk simultaneously.

But access to cheap credit from state controlled banks creates an incentive for SOEs to generate surplus capacity, which increases systemic risk in the economy.

No player but the last in the securitization chain was exposed to the ultimate credit risk the rest simply raked in high fees and commissions.