Private Markets’ Data Black Holes Leave Watchdogs ‘Flying Blind’

Predicting the next economic crash or financial crisis has always been more art than science. Today there’s an added complication — the increasing paucity of information about what’s really going on in the economy and financial system.

The issue was thrown into sharp focus last year during the US government shutdown, when the Federal Reserve was starved of key data from inflation to retail sales and job numbers used to shape monetary policy. Yet the barriers to accessing data on key risks — some with the power to roil the global financial system — stretch far beyond recent political events in the world’s largest economy and into the ...