Finance: From the rubble to the bubble

WITH A SPRING in the step of the international capital markets and some green shoots of recovery in the deal-printing securitization business, you could, with one eye closed, conclude that a recovery is taking place in the global financial markets. Open the other eye and the picture is much more mixed. The funnelling of trillions of taxpayer dollars into the banking system has achieved its initial goal of avoiding systemic failure and stabilizing the markets but its second-order effects have created an artificial repricing of risk assets across the broader asset class of fixed income.