One of the investors who made a fortune betting against subprime mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis believes Wall Street may be overlooking another growing risk.
This time, the target is private credit.
Investor Lee Robinson reportedly generated gains of roughly 900% during the housing collapse by identifying risks that most of the market ignored.
Now he is focused on a sector that has exploded in size over the past decade.
Private credit has grown into a market worth roughly $1.8 trillion.
The industry expanded rapidly during years of low interest rates, as investors searched for higher yields and companies looked for alternatives to traditional bank loans.
The concern is not just the loans themselves.
It is who owns them.
Robinson has pointed to insurance companies as a potential pressure point.
Many insurers have increased exposure to private credit and other illiquid assets in an effort to boost returns.
That strategy works when credit conditions remain stable.
The problem appears when defaults rise, valuations come under pressure, or investors start demanding liquidity.
Private credit is often marketed as a safer alternative to riskier parts of the credit market.
But critics argue that the lack of transparency and limited price discovery can hide problems for longer than public markets.
That does not mean a crisis is imminent.
But it does mean stress can build beneath the surface without attracting much attention.
The lesson from 2008 is not that every credit boom ends in disaster.
The lesson is that the biggest risks are often the ones investors stop talking about.
Lee Robinson believes private credit may be one of them.
The question is whether the market is seeing the warning signs early enough this time.
“Morgan Stanley caps withdrawals at private credit fund after rising pullout requests." Reuters reports Morgan Stanley’s $7B private credit fund is getting slammed with withdrawal requests again.
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Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭
@ThierryBorgeat
That’s insane.
Another crack in private markets.
Private equity executives are now taking out personal loans against money they haven’t been paid, and might never be.
Here’s the mechanic. A PE manager’s big payday is “carried interest,” their cut of a fund’s profits. But it only pays out when the fund sells its companies. With exits frozen since 2022, that payday keeps getting pushed further into the future.
So they’re borrowing against it. Going to specialist lenders and pledging their forecasted, unrealized future profits as collateral for cash today. A mortgage backed not by a house, but by a promise of gains that haven’t been realized.
And the demand is exploding. One London broker fielded 459 inquiries in the first half of this year, up from 134 a year ago. They say they’ve never seen demand this high.
Sit with what that tells you.
These are the people closest to the assets. The insiders who know exactly what their portfolios are really worth. And they would rather borrow against their carry than wait for it to pay out.
When the people who built the machine start pawning their share of it for cash now, they’re telling you something about how confident they are the exits are coming.
Stack it up. Partners Group’s worst day since 2006. Blackstone gating withdrawals. And now the GPs themselves levering up personally to get liquid.
The fund is leveraged. The portfolio companies are leveraged. And now the executives are leveraged too. Three layers of debt stacked on the same illiquid, unrealized value.
The canary isn’t just singing quieter. It’s borrowing money to keep the lights on.
That's insane.
Another crack in private markets.
Private equity executives are now taking out personal loans against money they haven't been paid, and might never be.
Here's the mechanic. A PE manager's big payday is "carried interest," their cut of a fund's profits. But it… https://t.co/ceRZMXplsD pic.twitter.com/7HKmUJMiCm
— Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭 (@ThierryBorgeat) June 24, 2026