The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday, Feb. 12, edition that to create conditions for a financial crisis, a key ingredient is opacity. The Globe's guest columnist Chris Gayu writes that an unregulated, opaque market breeds uncertainty, a market's greatest fear. Investors should be cautious of the systemic risk from "private credit," a type of shadow banking that has expanded significantly over the past 25 years. Also called "direct lending," it involves non-bank lending to small- and mid-sized start-ups and grew notably after the 2008-09 financial crisis due to restrictions on large public banks. The sector has partly replaced traditional banks by using private funds and publicly traded business development companies that raise capital and hold loans to maturity. Moody's expects global private-credit assets under management will surpass $2-trillion (U.S.) next year and reach nearly $4-trillion (U.S.) by 2030. For context, outstanding credit to U.S. non-financial businesses totalled $14-trillion (U.S.) in the third quarter. Alarms that went off before the 2008 crash are ringing again, among them credit-ratings arbitrage and the packaging of loans much like the securitized mortgages that fuelled the housing bubble.