lmost all human history can be written as the search for and the production of different forms of safe assets.”43 This may be true, but it begs the question of what was happening in the late 1990s and early 2000s to drive a huge surge in the demand for safe assets. The first part of the answer is the development of the emerging market economies from the 1990s. As a result of their trade surpluses and their desire to self-insure against the risk of a repeat of the 1994–1998 crises, they wanted reserve assets that they could liquidate in an emergency. And the assets that best fit that
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