Whether the clearinghouse reduces systemic risk depends on the relative systemic importance of those inside and those outside the clearinghouse – AIG versus Citibank in this basic example – not on the clearinghouse’s capacity to reduce risk among its members. In this example, if Citibank is precarious and is as systemically vital as AIG, the clearinghouse has obscured that it has saved AIG only by transferring risk from the clearinghouse to Citibank, which then fails.
清算所是否减少系统风险取决于其内部单位和外部单位的相对系统重要性（在我们的例子中，就是AIG和花旗银行谁更具有系统重要性），而不取决于清算所减少其会员单位之间的风险的能力。在我们的例子中，如果花旗银行告急，且其系统重要性不亚于AIG，那么清算所只是造成了它拯救了AIG的假象，实际上，它只是把风险从清算所转移到了花旗银行身上，并导致了后者的破产。