18 September 2017 Long•Term Asset Return Study: The Next Financial Crisis Candidates for the next Financial Crisis In this section we'll highlight some of the potential candidates for the next financial crisis. This is far from a prediction that they will occur but merely to show where some of the stresses are in the financial system and ones that could create global financial and economic problems. The list is also not exhaustive. Crises and shocks by their nature are unpredictable and while we might be right that the current system is crisis prone, we may be missing a brewing problem elsewhere under our noses! So we're more confident that crises can't be avoided in this global financial framework rather than confident of where they'll occur next. Nevertheless, there are places we can look to and the following section details where vigilance and prudence are required. The Great Central Bank unwind When looking for the next financial crisis, it's hard to escape from the fact that we're seemingly in the early stages of the 'great unwind' of global monetary stimulus at the same time as global debt remains at all-time highs following an increase over the past decade - at the government level at least - which has been unparalleled in peacetime history. Not only are interest rates starting to rise (e.g. US, Canada), but the Fed is about to start running down its balance sheet with the ECB likely to soon announce that the tapering of GE will continue in 2018. Working in financial markets on a day to day basis it's easy to become blasé about the size of central bank balance sheets. You slowly become anchored to believe the current situation is normal as it's persisted for so long now. However it's anything but normal. Since the financial crisis. $10 trillion plus has been added to the balance sheets of the four largest central banks with over $14 trillion of assets now owned. Since a local trough in March 2015, the ECB alone has added around $2.