Banking Risk

The US commercial banking sector's loan-to-deposit ratio has risen every year since 2022: 62.8% in June 2022, climbing steadily to 71.8% by June 2026. Deposits grew 6.6% over the period while loans grew 21.9% -- loan growth has consistently outpaced deposit growth, steadily narrowing the sector's liquidity buffer. Commercial and industrial lending followed a different, more cyclical path: a genuine contraction from $2,761.7bn (June 2024) to $2,680.1bn (June 2025), followed by an 8.0% recovery to $2,894.3bn by June 2026. The aggregate loan book's steady climb was masking this separate dip-and-recovery cycle in business lending specifically.

20 July 2026 · 5 min read

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has contracted 24.8% from its April 2022 peak ($8.97 trillion) to $6.74 trillion as of 15 July 2026; the ECB's has contracted further in percentage terms, 32.4% from its June 2022 peak (EUR 8.84 trillion) to EUR 5.97 trillion as of 10 July 2026. Both central banks have been shrinking their balance sheets for over three years, but the most recent six weeks show a genuine divergence: the Fed's total assets were essentially flat (a marginal increase from $6.71tn to $6.74tn), while the ECB's continued contracting (from EUR 6.14tn to EUR 5.97tn, -2.7%). This is the launch edition of a Report intended to track both balance sheets on a recurring basis.

20 July 2026 · 5 min read

This is the launch edition of an ongoing Country Risk series -- a different format from the platform's first three publications, each of which was built around a single thesis. A country risk profile is a synthesis: growth, inflation, the labor market, fiscal position, banking conditions, and external balances, read together rather than in isolation, because risk assessment depends on how these dimensions interact, not on any one of them alone. Read together, the US picture as of mid-2026 is one of genuine strength alongside two specific, worth-naming tensions. Growth remains positive and above-trend by the OECD's own leading indicator. The labor market has improved from a November 2025 peak in unemployment. Governance and rule-of-law indicators remain strong by international standards. Against this, two tensions stand out: an unresolved divergence between the Federal Reserve's two inflation gauges, and a federal fiscal position -- 122.6% debt-to-GDP, a 5.77% deficit -- that this piece treats as structural context rather than an immediate risk trigger.

16 July 2026 · 6 min read

This is the first installment of an ongoing Global Liquidity Monitor. It is launched under that name deliberately, but scoped honestly: the platform's current data supports a genuine US dollar liquidity read, not yet a truly global one. Two distinct signals are worth tracking together. First, US M2 money supply has clearly accelerated through the first five months of 2026, after a full year of steadier growth -- a shift that coincides directly with the Federal Reserve's December 2025 decision to end quantitative tightening and begin stabilizing its balance sheet around an 'ample reserves' level. Second, the BIS credit-to-GDP gap has been gradually narrowing throughout 2025, moving from -12.59 percentage points in January to -11.54 in October, meaning credit growth has been slowly closing the gap with trend growth even while remaining below it. Neither signal alone would be conclusive; read together, they describe a liquidity environment that is genuinely loosening, gradually, from a below-trend starting point.

16 July 2026 · 5 min read

US bank deposits and loans have both grown steadily over the past eighteen months, but not at the same pace. Total deposits rose from $17,815bn in January 2025 to $19,435bn in July 2026 -- up roughly 9% over the window. Total loans and leases rose from $12,628bn to $13,854bn over the same period -- a similar magnitude of growth, but running consistently faster on a month-by-month basis. The result is a loan-to-deposit ratio that climbed fairly steadily from about 70.7% in early 2025 to a peak of 72.2% in March 2026, before easing back to roughly 71.8% over the most recent three months. That full trajectory -- a real, sustained rise followed by a modest recent pullback, not a single clean number -- is what this piece actually tracks, rather than a simplified before-and-after comparison that would understate both the peak and the recent reversal.

16 July 2026 · 4 min read