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“Do you think firefighters in California or New York have any idea their pensions are invested in CLOs?” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a consultant focused on banking and capital markets regulation in New York. “It’s the people who are unsuspecting and have nothing to do with Wall Street who are the people who will get hurt in a downturn.”

Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal at MRV Associates, who started her career in foreign exchange at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, believes the foreign exchange market is the most volatile one in which to trade, after commodities, “In order to be a good currency trader, you need to know a lot about country and economics risks, because currencies are very sensitive to country risks like sovereign defaults, expropriation, nationalization, corruption, unstable governments, and economic risks like inflation, GDP levels, and employment rates,” she says.

“I really think this is much more bank driven since they’re keenly aware of the actual costs and capital costs to these kinds of problems,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares at MRV Associates, which advises banks on regulatory issues. If an aggregator is breached and customer login information or data gets out, Valladares said banks know those problems will become theirs from the perspective of the bank regulator.

Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a capital markets and regulatory consultant, notes that New York City has only about $59 billion in assets to pay $244 billion in liabilities. “Moreover, this burden grew by an additional $1,600 for every New York City resident every year since 2014,” Rodriguez Valladares told The Post.

It makes sense that a company devoted primarily to credit card customers would expect to also have to shore up loan loss reserves toward the end of an expansionary credit cycle, said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing partner at MRV Associates, a bank and capital markets consulting firm. “The whole point of the reserve is that you can get prepared for that downturn,” Rodriguez Valladares said. “And we have to remember that credit card holders don’t just have credit card debt; they have auto loans, maybe student loans, they may have a mortgage. You have to also make estimates that this person has other levels of debt.”

“I’ve been very bearish on the economy. I thought there would be a recession in 2019. The only reason I revised my thinking was that the (Federal Reserve) paused raising rates,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, a New York-based capital markets and financial regulatory consulting and training firm. “I know when rates tick up again, companies won’t be able to pay all of their debt. The biggest concern is the debt level.” “You can hide your loans when there’s a good economy,” Rodriguez Valladares said. “But dirt always comes out in a recession.”