Earthlog · Money and credit
Global Finance
Where the world's money and credit sit and how stressed they are: dollar funding abroad, central bank rates, currency valuation, private and government debt, house prices, who banks lend to, and how much trading uses each currency. All from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Dollar, euro and yen credit outside their home economies
| Credit to non-bank borrowers | Now (trillions) | Year on year | Last 12 years |
|---|
Central bank policy rates
Currency valuation: real effective exchange rates
Credit stress
Residential property prices, real, year on year
Who lends to whom
Which currencies are traded
How to read this. Credit gap is private credit to GDP minus its own long-run trend, in percentage points. The BIS treats a gap above 10 points as a warning sign of a credit boom that has often come before banking stress, and 2 to 10 as worth watching; it is a signal, not a forecast. Debt service ratio is the share of income that goes on interest and principal. Currency valuation compares a currency's trade-weighted, inflation-adjusted value with its own 10-year average; high means expensive against trading partners, not that it must fall. Government debt is nominal value as a share of GDP.
Who lends to whom. The first view is banks' cross-border claims by where the bank is located (BIS locational banking statistics). The second is claims of banking groups by their home country, on a guarantor (ultimate risk) basis, which assigns a claim to the country of the guarantor where there is one (BIS consolidated banking statistics). Both cover banks only, not bonds, funds or foreign direct investment. Financial centres (marked) such as the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore and Ireland are booking and routing points, so their numbers say little about who ultimately owns or owes the money; you can hide them. Amounts are in US dollars at the latest quarter.
Timing. Policy rates and exchange rates update daily or monthly. Credit, property and banking data are quarterly and run about six months behind; each table shows its own date. Currency trading comes from a survey every three years.
Source: Bank for International Settlements statistics (data.bis.org), used with attribution.