The emergence in recent years of new products, such as credit derivatives and CDOs (collateralised debt obligations), and deeper markets for other more traditional products, such as asset-backed securities, have provided financial market agents with a new range of profit and risk possibilities, allowed more dynamic and intensive risk management, and made for greater diffusion and better diversification of risk. Similarly, the emergence of new operators, with investors prepared not only to assume new risks but particularly to do so over longer terms, has in recent years enabled shocks to be absorbed on markets with a lower level of stress and, subsequently, lower volatility. Finally, regulated and non-regulated financial institutions alike, by increasingly having better risk management systems, combined with supervisory and regulatory models based not on coercive restrictions but on providing incentives for proper risk management, contribute clearly to market stability. Unsurprisingly, as a result of all these factors, the international financial system has demonstrated notable stability and substantial capacity to absorb adverse impacts level-headedly, ensuring that the few episodes of overreaction have been very short-lived. However, these structural improvements should not mask the fragilities inherent in this new and more complex environment. The improvements based on proper risk management and diversification are genuine ones. But they entail considerable management complexity and the growing involvement of agents not subject to prudential supervisory arrangements who do not yet have tried and tested experience in managing the risks assumed in more adverse economic environments.

According to this source, the households that have the larger debts are those less likely to lose their income. Meanwhile, after the global crisis of 2008–2009, estimates suggest that the fraction of households in a situation of financial risk is around 4 percent, close to where it was in 2007. 1 Information made public point to severe problems in the corporate governance of this company, with irresponsible lending policies and major abusive deficiencies in the information on their credit portfolio that was delivered to investors and supervising organizations. It is also likely that the law has been broken with respect to the delivery of information and the operation of the lending activities. This has triggered a discussion over the role that different organisms should have played, including management, the board of directors, auditors and risk-rating agencies. Certainly there have been grave irregularities that need clarification. It is also necessary to establish any potential flaws of our regulatory and supervisory framework. I would like to say, however, that at this time we must let the mechanisms of supervision and sanction provided for in the laws governing the securities and stock markets do their work. Also, those responsible for the damages caused must be investigated and punished with all the rigor of the law for their wrongdoing. Episodes like this one should never occur again. This case brought to light two important flaws from which we must draw lessons in legislation, regulations and control. What we have now is obviously insufficient.