The contemporary financial crisis is commonly explained by regulatory failures, miscalculations by bank management, or excessive risk-taking by individual institutions. However, the statistics used by the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, and leading central banks point to a different picture. What is at issue is not malfunctions in individual segments, but a structurally determined stage in the development of the financial system, in which the accumulation of liabilities has significantly outpaced the capacity for their profitable reproduction: total global debt (public and private combined) was estimated at around $251 trillion in 2024, exceeding approximately 235% of global GDP, which implies that even debt stabilization now occurs at a level that structurally pressures profitability and solvency.
The key object of analysis here is not banks as legal entities, but the mass of debt securities—above all those issued during the period of low interest rates and structured for long-term servicing under conditions of minimal borrowing costs. The rise in interest rates did not create the crisis, but merely exposed its inevitability: a substantial portion of these liabilities ceased to correspond to the real capacity of the economy to generate sufficient income for their servicing. As a result, a large-scale decline in asset values occurred, recorded in statistics as portfolio revaluation, but in substance representing a devaluation of expectations of future profit; at the same time, the current “interest-rate temperature” is measurable: the upper bound of the federal funds target range stands at 3.75% (FRED data as of January 12, 2026).
Such a crisis does not arise within the financial sphere by itself. It reflects a deeper contradiction—the limited capacity for the expansion of production while maintaining previous rates of return. When investment in the real sector ceases to provide the required yield, capital increasingly turns toward financial forms of income. Debt securities become a means of preserving and redistributing value, while simultaneously becoming ever more detached from its source—production. BIS statistics capture precisely this stage: the moment when financial claims exceed the material base upon which they can be realized; even one of the “thermometers” of this sphere—the volume of outstanding international debt securities—stood at approximately $33.19 trillion in Q3 2025 (valued in U.S. dollars).
The BIS methodology, based on the analysis of intersectoral balance-sheet linkages, shows that banks in this system primarily perform the function of intermediaries. They accumulate, hold, and redistribute claims, but do not determine their economic content. For this reason, the crisis manifests not as a “collapse of banks,” but as the destruction of the value of the assets recorded on their balance sheets. Banks become vulnerable not because of “poor management,” but because they service a form of capital that has lost its connection to the process of income creation.
In this context, the actions of U.S. regulators acquire a different logic. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is no longer oriented toward preserving banks at any cost. It proceeds from the premise that a portion of institutions is economically non-viable and must be closed. Rapid resolution procedures, the publication of standardized documentation, and the expansion of the pool of asset buyers establish the “legitimacy” of bankruptcy as a routine mechanism of property redistribution; moreover, a large-scale “panic” is not required for the continuation of this process: even in 2025, two bank failures were officially recorded—Pulaski Savings Bank (Chicago, Illinois) and The Santa Anna National Bank (Texas). Both banks were relatively small in terms of assets (tens of millions of dollars), which reflects the nature of the current situation: failures occur not among large systemic institutions, but on the periphery, and regulators close them selectively rather than through a mass collapse. Here, the bank is treated not as an object of rescue, but as a carrier of assets to be sold to those capable of employing them under new conditions.The Federal Reserve System performs a different function. Through its requirements for orderly resolution plans for the largest financial groups, it proceeds from the recognition that stability cannot be guaranteed. The regulator does not demand the prevention of collapse, but proof that disintegration is possible without the immediate destruction of the entire system. The crisis is fixed as a normal phase, in which overaccumulation leads to concentration and centralization, and these, in turn, to the devaluation of capital: the monetary form expands, while its capacity to be transformed into real profit contracts. At the same time, the trajectory of Federal Reserve policy in 2026 is formulated as “closer to neutral” and “without an urgent need for further cuts,” while the return of inflation to 2 percent is projected toward 2027, which in effect establishes 2026–2027 as a period of strict discipline over the value of money, during which capital devaluation is not offset by an easing of conditions of circulation.
A special role in this configuration is played by the United States Department of the Treasury. Its priority is the preservation of the functioning of the U.S. government debt market. BIS statistics emphasize that government debt securities constitute the foundation of the contemporary financial architecture: they are used as collateral, as a settlement instrument, and as a base of liquidity. Their stability is critical not because they are “safe,” but because through them the redistribution of devalued capital and the fixation of claims on future surplus value across all sectors of the economy is carried out. Two quantitative facts are decisive here: (1) according to SIFMA, the volume of U.S. Treasury securities outstanding was estimated at approximately $30.3 trillion by the end of 2025, while average daily trading volume reached around $1.047 trillion; (2) at the same time, the official FSOC report records total Treasury debt at approximately $38 trillion as of September 30, 2025, and emphasizes that the economically significant portion “held by the public” exceeds $29 trillion—meaning that the market has reached a scale that already “strains the capacity of intermediaries to absorb shocks,” forcing the state to restructure the infrastructure of its circulation (including the expansion of Treasury and repo clearing). A loss of confidence in this market would imply the impossibility of further redistributing the costs of the crisis.
It is precisely for this reason that in 2026–2027 policy will be directed not toward general recovery, but toward the limited preservation of key forms of financial circulation. On the basis of statistical trends, an intensification of capital concentration can be expected. Holders of liquidity and structures embedded within state mechanisms will be able to acquire devalued assets, while less protected participants will be forced to exit the market. The number of significant players will decline, while their economic and political weight will increase; and here the logic of the FSOC is indicative: the growth in the volume of Treasuries is already being treated as a burden on dealer intermediation capacity and as a reason for regulatory change, meaning that the state is not merely “observing,” but is compelled to restructure the rules of circulation, consolidating an already existing concentration of capital and strengthening the systemic role of the largest intermediaries and clearing centers.
At the same time, pressure intensifies on the middle layer of financial institutions and on those segments of real production in which the decline in the rate of profit renders the further reproduction of capital increasingly difficult. Under conditions of overaccumulation, capital is displaced from spheres with low returns, while credit, as a form of advancing future profit, contracts and concentrates among those whose activity ensures the preservation and redistribution of already accumulated value. In this way, credit ceases to function as a means of expanding production and increasingly becomes a mechanism of exclusion, redirecting capital toward ever greater concentration. This leads not to a “reallocation of resources” in an abstract sense, but to the redistribution of capital from productive forms with a “reduced” rate of profit toward financial and quasi-financial institutions.
It is important to emphasize that this redistribution does not eliminate the underlying contradiction. The devaluation of assets and their concentration do not create new sources of profit, but merely redistribute existing ones.
The costs of the crisis will be compensated through future labor—via inflation, increased tax burdens, and the reduction and curtailment of social expenditures. In this way, the system does not resolve its internal contradictions, but once again shifts them forward, attempting to postpone collapse, while in reality intensifying tensions in the future.
By 2027, the financial system will become more rigid, more centralized, and less oriented toward broad-based expansion of production. This is neither chaos nor a sudden collapse, but a law-governed restructuring, recorded in BIS statistics and implemented through the actions of U.S. regulators. In this model, the crisis appears not as a malfunction, but as a means of redistributing property and power under conditions of limited possibilities for further growth.
As of January 13, 2026, the initial data already set the framework: the level of interest and the conditions of credit remain tight (upper bound 3.75%), the volume of U.S. public debt and the Treasury market have reached a scale at which the state is compelled to sustain and reorganize the forms of circulation of fictitious capital, strengthening clearing and the “throughput capacity” of intermediaries (approximately $30.3 trillion in Treasury securities outstanding by market statistics, about $38 trillion in total Treasury debt by official estimate, of which more than $29 trillion constitutes the economically circulating mass held by the public), while global debt remains at a historically high level ($251 trillion, over 235% of GDP). From this follows not “calming,” but the formula of the next two years: compelled credit contraction, bankruptcies, discounted asset sales, and accelerated concentration of ownership. Individual bank failures may remain few in number (as in 2025—two cases mentioned earlier in this article).
The central question in this situation is not whether the crisis can be avoided, but who will retain control over assets after it has passed, and at whose expense the further reproduction of the system will be ensured. The statistics provide a sufficiently definite answer to this question. BIS statistics and the current architecture of the U.S. financial system make it possible to outline with sufficient precision the groups which, in each scenario, either strengthen their positions or lose relative weight. What is at issue is not accidental winners, but structurally predetermined roles.
Regardless of the trajectory of interest-rate policy, the winners are the structures embedded in the servicing of U.S. government debt and in the U.S. settlement infrastructure. This group includes the largest intermediary banks and primary dealers of Treasury obligations—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. Their advantage lies not in balance-sheet “resilience,” but in access to liquidity, clearing, and operations in government securities. In 2026–2027, it is precisely these banks that will retain the capacity to accumulate assets sold by less resilient institutions under the pressure of the crisis and to increase their share within the financial system even amid overall contraction.
In parallel, the largest forms of concentration of money capital, sseparated from the process of direct production, will be strengthened. These are structures that function as “organs of capital’s power,” such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors; they act as organs of financial capital, concentrating social capital in their hands and subordinating industrial production to themselves. Through centralized capital management, they will continue to absorb weaker market participants, thereby, on the one hand, presenting a façade of reducing the share of fictitious capital, while, on the other hand, inflating it for their own purposes, extracting real capital in its material form from the market. Their activity is aimed at maintaining their resilience to the crisis by shifting costs onto labor (wage reductions, intensification of labor, rising unemployment) and onto society as a whole.
Under conditions of persistently high interest rates, advantage will be gained by such forms of money capital that do not require constant credit expansion to maintain their movement and extract income in the form of interest and regular deductions, rather than through the expansion of production.
These include the investment divisions of large banks, specialized funds oriented toward the purchase of devalued assets, as well as insurance organizations with long-term liabilities, for which a rise in bond yields means an increase in a stable inflow of money.
In this regime, the significance of large insurance and pension holders will increase, accumulating debt securities at reduced prices and fixing interest income for a prolonged term.
Their share will increase slowly but continuously, as less stable owners of capital are displaced.
If, however, the turn in monetary policy occurs faster than expected, decisive advantage will be gained by those groups that have preserved cash reserves and therefore will be able to enter circulation at the moment of the general turn.
These are, above all, large alternative investment groups—Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, KKR.
They will obtain the possibility to buy up real estate, infrastructure assets, and corporate debt claims, previously devalued as a consequence of the high cost of borrowing.
In other words, they will begin to acquire capital values precisely when others will be forced to alienate them.
Their economic domination will intensify as the number of independent participants in circulation decreases.
That part of the economic mass which is not included in stable forms of financial circulation—regional banks, mid-sized enterprises, sectors with a reduced rate of profit—under these conditions will be subjected to forced devaluation.
The value of their capital will fall, credit conditions will deteriorate, and their assets will pass from hand to hand.
In this case they act not as accidental victims of the crisis, but as material through which the redistribution of capital is carried out.
Their resources will gradually pass to new centers of concentration.
Thus, the coming crisis of 2026–2027 will not eliminate contradictions, but will only transfer them into a more concentrated form, in which strict monetary discipline, forced bankruptcies, and the sale of assets at a discount will appear not as a means of recovery, but as a symptom of the process itself.
Under these conditions, the concentration of property will proceed faster and more sharply: the rise in asset prices will entrench capital with those who had access to money before the beginning of the “controlled collapse,” and not with those who turned out to be the forced seller.
The most vulnerable link will be regional and medium-sized U.S. banks that do not possess a systemic position and are not involved in operations with government debt.
Their existence depends on the credit spread and local deposits, which come under pressure both under high rates and under sharp changes in monetary policy.
In 2026–2027, precisely this category will become the main zone of bankruptcies, mergers, and acquisitions.
Similar pressure will be experienced by medium-sized investment funds and non-bank financial structures that do not have direct access to settlement systems and state sources of liquidity.
Regardless of the scenario, those sectors and forms of properties that will not be able to provide a sufficient rate of return required by financial monopolists will also lose positions.
Small and medium business, low-margin productive sectors, and regions remote from financial centers will face with the rise in the cost of credit and the limitation of investments.
Thus, in 2026–2027 the redistribution of assets and the strengthening of the concentration of capital have a law-governed, not accidental, character.
Those who will control cash reserves, settlements, and the circulation of government debt will win; those who will be outside the monopolistic circle of existence will fall out of the market; however, the monopolies themselves will also transform continuously, absorbing each other, as is already happening today in the media sphere, for example the “Netflix–Warner Brothers” deal.
The share of the former will grow under any course of events, whereas the latter will become a source of capital at whose expense the system will attempt to maintain its equilibrium.
Author of the Article
Catherine Kirelina
[Authors of the book “The Power of Self-Seekers and Grabbers” in three volumes, as well as the published book “Ukraine. THERE IS A WAY OUT…”]
Release Date: January 14, 2026
Publisher: The Eastern Post, London-Paris, United Kingdom-France, 2026.
