Crime Against Humanity: the Holy GAAP, 32

A few data can be put together to confirm what such premises would suggest: the off−balance sheet activities of bankers and their mates are a rising tide beside, and in addition to, the already incredible in itself privilege granted to them within the balance sheet by the legal coverage examined here. Let us see some:
In the period from 1980 to first quarter of 1987, while the loan commitments of United States’ banks remained rather stable at just above 300 percent of their capital, their off−balance sheet activities went from 225 percent of their capital to above 1100 percent of it.
In 1987, the gross value of the off−balance sheet business of Australian banks is three times the size of their balance sheet totals.
Until 2003, the market for loan securitisation in the United States rarely surpassed 20 billion dollars; in 2007, it surpassed 180 billion dollars.
And according to the Shared National Credit program run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, as reported by an officer of the New York Federal Reserve Research and Statistics Group, “in 1988, lead banks – including commercial banks, bank holding companies, thrifts and thrift holding companies, credit unions, and foreign banking organizations – retained in aggregate 18 percent of the credit lines and 21 percent of the term loans they extended in that year. By 2006, the last year before the data pick up the effects of the most recent financial crisis, lead banks had lowered their market share to 14 percent of the credit lines they originated, and decreased their market share of the term loans they originated to 9 percent. […]