The Federal Reserve's latest financial accounts dataset offers a stark visualization of the US financial system's interconnectedness. A chord diagram illustrates the massive scale of claims, showing US households hold $29 trillion in pension fund assets, while pension funds channel $6 trillion into mutual funds and $8 trillion into non-financial corporations. This $29 trillion figure represents the core of the system's counterparty risk, where the failure of one entity could trigger cascading effects. The visualization also highlights the sheer size of federal government liabilities ($5.3 trillion in Treasuries) and corporate debt, underscoring the hidden vulnerabilities beyond traditional banking.

The Fed created this data to understand pre-crisis household debt growth outside regulated sectors, finding no current shadow banking threat but flagging federal liabilities as a potential concern.