2026-05-07
21 分钟Earlier this year, trouble showed up in the hottest corner of Wall Street.
Private credit.
Private credit.
The boom in private credit.
The private credit craze.
Suddenly, a lot of investors were in a panic, and they started picking up their phones.
They were all asking their financial advisors the same question.
They were literally calling their brokers and being like, how much money do I have in private credit?
This question, our colleague Matt Wertz says, was often followed by an urgent request.
Eject, eject, eject, get me out right now.
And you saw massive amounts of people asking for their money back.
But many of these investors couldn't get their money back, at least not right away.
Private credit, a world of opaque lending without much regulation, is a more than $3 trillion market.
It operates outside the traditional banking system and tends to offer higher returns, but also comes with higher risk.
From day one, there's been skepticism about private credit.
And as private credits grown, so has an underlying worry.
What happens if investors suddenly want out?
The worst thing for the financial system is a liquidity crisis.
It's when all of a sudden financial institutions are asked to pony up cash and they can't.
For years, those concerns stayed in the background because nothing went wrong.