As global liquidity tide recedes, hazards in financial system are laid bare: IMF

Tokyo

CENTRAL banks "saved the world" after the global financial crisis of 2008 by flooding it with money, enabling the financial institutions that underpin economic activity to survive. But now that the tide of liquidity is receding, hazards are being exposed among banks and finance houses.

The US Federal Reserve revealed last week that overlending by US banks during a long period of historically low interest rates has left them vulnerable now that rates are rising again, while former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan has warned of a "bubble" in global bond markets.

Now, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has turned the spotlight on Japan which it said in a report last week "has one of the largest and most sop…