The recent crisis was characterized by massive illiquidity. This paper reviews what we know and don't know about illiquidity and all its friends: market freezes, fire sales, contagion, and ultimately insolvencies and bailouts. It first explains why liquidity cannot easily be apprehended through...

I explain the key failure mechanics of large dealer banks, and some policy implications. This is not a review of the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Systemic risk is considered only in passing. Both the financial crisis and the systemic...

The unfolding financial turmoil in mature economies has prompted the official and private sectors to reconsider policies, business models and risk management practices. Regardless of its future evolution, it already threatens to become one of the defining economic moments of the 21st century....

Using two newly available ultrahigh-frequency datasets, we investigate empirically how frequently one can sample certain foreign exchange and U.S. Treasury security returns without contaminating estimates of their integrated volatility with market microstructure noise. We find that one can...