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Commentary

Securitization

Brian Sack

Fri, March 26, 2010

[S]ecuritization is a powerful vehicle that should play an important role in the intermediation of credit in the economy. Securitization can be quite effective at transforming illiquid assets into negotiable securities and transferring risk to a more diversified set of holders. To be sure, the expansion of securitized credit was much too extensive, and its subsequent collapse was terribly disruptive, contributing significantly to the damage to the economy. However, those developments do not mean that securitized credit, if structured properly, should not return in size. Reform efforts, to be effective, should foster development of a securitization market that properly aligns incentives and provides adequate transparency about risk transfer.