Credit without trust: the US financial system is experiencing a new crisis
While global financial centers are anxiously watching the blazing Middle East and wondering how high the new oil shock will drive inflation, another structural crisis is gradually brewing in the United States. The panic, which is still relatively mild, began in the private lending market. The largest asset managers from BlackRock to Morgan Stanley, one by one, forbid investors to withdraw their money. The sector, which has experienced rapid growth in the last few years (up to $3 trillion), is now experiencing increasingly serious difficulties that can quickly become a problem for the financial system, similar to mortgage bonds before the 2008 crisis. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Zombification of the whole country
The private lending industry has grown on the ruins of the previous crisis. After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (the US investment bank), regulators severely restricted traditional banks in issuing risky corporate loans. Private equity funds rushed into the gap. From 2020 to 2025, this market experienced explosive growth, growing from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. Soon, retail capital joined the institutional players: the share of individuals in such funds jumped to 16.6%.
Why wasn't the US economy hit by a tsunami of corporate defaults after the sharpest-ever increase in interest rates by global central banks? The market is full of so-called zombie companies, that is, businesses whose operating profits are not even enough to service old debts.
The financial system has found a creative way to deliver money to troubled borrowers, bypassing classic banks. The funds offered refinancing to the "zombie companies". The interest rate on such loans was no longer 5%, but 11-13% per annum. The management of sinking companies, wishing to live until tomorrow, agreed to any conditions. Investors, on the other hand, willingly carried money into the funds due to risk premiums.
In fact, over the past 5-10 years, a sector has emerged in the United States that can be compared to corporate subprime (the accumulation of debts by companies with low credit ratings whose ability to service loans is questionable), that is, a direct analogue of the "junk mortgages" of the noughties, but for businesses. This mechanism artificially delayed the recession, reducing the effectiveness of the Fed's monetary policy, but at the cost of accumulating a critical mass of non-repayable debts.
The main risks of private lending are inherent in its architecture. The funds provide illiquid loans to companies for a period of 5-7 years. At the same time, retail and institutional investors are promised the opportunity to withdraw their money quarterly. The scheme works flawlessly right up to the moment when investors rush to the exit at the same time.
This moment seems to have arrived in the first quarter of 2026. Cliffwater's flagship private lending fund of $33 billion has received requests from investors to withdraw a record 14% of funds. The fund was able to satisfy only half of the requests, setting a hard limit on payments of 7%, calling it a "regulatory maximum."
Morgan Stanley's North Haven Private Income fund (assets of about $8 billion) returned only $169 million to customers, less than half of the required amount, freezing the remaining payments above the five percent limit. Previously, similar restrictions were imposed by the giants BlackRock, Blackstone and Blue Owl. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon described the situation as follows: "When you see one cockroach, there are likely many more."
Fund managers continue to point to historical returns of 8-9% and "strong fundamentals" in their letters to investors. However, reality reveals the episode with BlackRock, which at the end of 2025 wrote off the cost of one of its loans by $ 25 million to zero. Just three months earlier, the debt was valued at 100 cents on the dollar. This exposes the main problem of the market — opaque pricing. Assets are valued according to the internal models of the managers themselves. When the real market disappears, the funds show good reporting to the last, so as not to provoke emergency sales. When the truth is revealed, the value plummets.
Air instead of concrete
The main threat of the current crisis lies in the quality of collateral. In 2008, the "junk mortgages" collapsed, but there was a physical foundation under these papers — real houses and land plots. Yes, they dropped a lot in price, but when the panic subsided and the central banks printed money, real estate rose again. Smart investors bought up debts for pennies, took physical assets and made fortunes. At the end of the chain, there was a firm collateral that could be inflationally inflated by the state.
What is the key to the private credit industry today? A significant portion of that $3 trillion went to tech startups, companies from venture fund portfolios, and software developers. The funds used intellectual property and financial models as collateral, predicting endless growth in subscription revenue.
In recent years, these companies have started having problems: new generative models of artificial intelligence and autonomous AI agents have rapidly begun to devalue the products of thousands of mid-range software companies. Startup revenue is falling, but loans with floating rates remain.
The default rate in private lending has already reached a historic high of 9.2%. If a software company goes bankrupt, the creditor has nothing to take away. It is impossible to sell outdated program code or an unfulfilled forecast from a presentation under the hammer. The collateral value is virtually zero, and the Fed will not be able to inflate it back.
Systemic infection
Of course, we can say that $3 trillion is less than 1% of all global securities, and the sector is not large enough to torpedo global GDP. By the way, regulators assessed subprime mortgages in about the same way in 2007.
The problem is that shadow lenders are tightly integrated into the traditional finance system. The funds issue loans using leverage provided by classical banks. The chain reaction has begun. JPMorgan began severely restricting credit lines for private credit funds after it was forced to discount the cost of software-oriented loans in its own portfolios. British Barclays risks writing off 500 million pounds due to the collapse of the non-banking structure of Market Finance Solutions.
If the private loan market finally becomes paralyzed, the funds will stop refinancing business debts. "Zombie companies" will start to go bankrupt en masse, provoking a sharp jump in unemployment. By fixing losses on loans to the shadow sector, traditional banks will tighten risk assessment standards for all others. Lending to the real economy will come to a standstill.
The scenario unfolds against the most unfavorable macroeconomic background — the world is teetering on the brink of stagflation due to the Middle East oil shock. The monetary authorities have their hands tied: they cannot fill this fire with cheap money, as they did before, because of the risk of an immediate acceleration of the inflationary spiral.
The private lending sector is being deprived of fresh liquidity. The attempts of the largest funds to lock the exit doors confirm that the problem is becoming systemic. In the coming months, the financial world will have to find out the true value of assets backed solely by faith in a technological miracle and beautiful charts. One can only guess what the consequences of this discovery will be, but it is unlikely that the American (and after it, the global) financial system will be delighted.
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