CDO’s are generally no longer held by banks. The closest derivative are CLOs and the bank with the biggest exposure to them I could find was JP Morgan Chase who holds less than 0.5% of their assets in them. They owe more than 40x in deposits than they hold in CLOs.
In no way does a bank holding CLOs on their balance sheet validate the idea that they are loaning out their deposits 6x. That simply doesn’t happen with well run banks and people espousing that it does largely don’t understand banking.
Right, I wasn’t saying it was a current vehicle, nor trying to bolster the 6x claim.
I’m just pointing out that doing stupid financial shit that is effectively the same as that kind of over-leveraging us hardly new, nor raised many eyebrows.
Banking trades will seek the most ways to make money possible. Before CDOs were the poison they are today they allowed 50x effective leverage
It led to the 2008 crash but they learned nothing.