NEWPORT BEACH – More than three years after the global financial crisis, the world still has a nasty plumbing problem. Credit pipes remain clogged, and only central banks are working to clear them. But their ability to do so is waning, posing yet another set of risks for Western economies blocked by too little growth, too much unemployment, deepening inequality, and debt in all the wrong places. Fortunately, it is not too late to build broader pipes that compliment and replace the damaged infrastructure.

The current situation embodies two narratives that seem contradictory, but are not. One speaks to the reality that most large companies with access to capital markets have no problem securing new funding. In fact, they have been remarkably successful in lengthening their debt maturities, accumulating cash, and lowering their future interest payments. In sum, they now have “fortress” balance sheets.

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The other narrative speaks to an opposing, but equally valid reality. Too many small companies and households still find it difficult to borrow at reasonable terms. This includes those reliant on bank credit, as well as many mortgage holders with very high legacy interest rates and balances that exceed their homes’ market value.

From every angle, the extremity of this state of affairs – in which those with access to credit do not need it, and those who do cannot get it – is highly problematic. If left unattended, it leads to a gradual, and then accelerated, renewed deleveraging of the economic system, with the highest first-round costs – a longer unemployment and growth crisis – borne disproportionately by those least able to suffer them. In the next round, as the system slowly implodes, even those with healthy balance sheets would be impacted, accelerating their disengagement from a deleveraging world economy.

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This is not just about socio-economic issues. There is also a political angle. With two competing, yet simultaneously valid narratives, ideological extremes harden. The result is even greater dysfunction in both process and content, ruling out any sustained policy attempt to make things better.

The problem has become acute in Europe, whose crisis has been belatedly recognized as reflecting something more than turmoil in the eurozone’s weakest countries. It also reflects broad-based contamination, resulting, most recently, in France’s loss of its vaunted AAA sovereign credit rating.

In the process, the efficacy of pan-European rescue mechanisms is being undermined. And, as fragilities increase – and as a financial wedge is driven into the eurozone’s core (Germany and France) – growth and employment prospects dim.

Central banks have recognized all of this for some time, prompting them to take enormous reputational and operational risks to slow the process. They have implemented a host of “unconventional policies” that previously would have been deemed unthinkable, even outrageous – and that can be seen in the enormous growth in their balance sheets.

In the last four years, the United States Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has more than tripled, from under $1 trillion to a mammoth $3 trillion. The growth relative to the size of the economy is even more stunning – from slightly more than 5 percent of GDP to 20 percent. The Bank of England’s balance sheet is also at 20 percent of GDP. And both seem to be itching to do even more.

The European Central Bank is often viewed as a laggard. No longer. Its balance sheet has now doubled, to a whopping 30 percent of GDP – and it, too, appears set to do even more. Mario Draghi, the ECB’s new president, recently said that he expects heavy take-up on the next three-year long-term refinancing operation, a powerful tool to pump cheap liquidity into the banks.

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Rather than just pumping liquidity into clogged pipes, countries can and should do more to build a more effective network of compensating conduits. In doing so, their main objective (indeed, the test for effectiveness) would be the extent to which new private-sector investment is “crowded in.”

Such policies would allow healthy balance sheets around the world, both public and private, to engage in a pro-growth and pro-jobs process. They require leadership, focus, and education. Absent that, plumbing problems will become more acute, and the repairs more complex and threatening to virtually everyone – including both the “one percenters” and those who worrisomely are struggling at the margins of society.

By Mohamed A. El-Erian

Copyright: Project-Syndicate, 2012

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Mohamed A. El-Erian is the current CEO and co-CIO of PIMC0. Prior to his stint at PIMCO, he served as President and CEO of the Harvard Management Company for 2 years, while also working at the IMF for 15 years. In 2008, his book "When Markets Collide", won the Financial Times award for Business Book of The Year in addition to being named as the one of the best business books of all time by The Independent.

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