Big Short's Moses: If Private Credit Goes, Fed Has No Choice But to Bail Out

Moses Ventures Founder Danny Moses, immortalized in The Big Short, joins Bloomberg Businessweek Daily to discuss the state of US markets as the Iran conflict introduces a new set of headwinds. Moses also weighs in on the state of private credit, saying that today's private credit worries "rhyme with previous cycles" of market pessimism, in particular the lead-up to the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. Moses adds that "it's in the back of people's minds... if private credit goes, the Fed's going to have no choice but to bail it out, and they're probably right." Moses also weighs in on the potential financial and labor market impacts of AI, the Fed's monetary policy path, betting markets, and more. Moses speaks with Bloomberg News Equities Reporter Alexandra Semenova alongside Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. One of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s private credit chiefs said limits on fund withdrawals are “features and not bugs,” as the $1.8 trillion market comes under increasing pressure from investors looking to exit.
So-called semi-liquid private credit funds typically allow for quarterly redemptions of 5%, with the ability to throw up gates for a set period if requests breach that threshold. Thus far, major firms in the industry including Blackstone Inc. and Blue Owl Capital Inc. have largely met elevated withdrawals or offered other payouts rather than solely restricting investors.

But gating allows “the fund to actually protect the investor and the fund from the kind of value degradation that can happen in the context of fire sales,” Vivek Bantwal, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s global co-head of private credit, said at the Bloomberg Invest conference Tuesday in New York.
While redemption requests from private credit funds surged in the final three months of 2025, early data suggest 2026 could also be challenging. Investment bank Robert A Stanger & Co., in report last week, forecast a 40% year-over-year drop in capital formation among business development companies amid a “hairpin turn” away from the asset class.
Blue Owl sparked a sharp decline in the shares of alternative-asset managers last month when it halted quarterly withdrawals in one of its funds. Instead, the firm sold assets to return investors’ cash, which it said it would be doing more quickly than if it had maintained the previous redemption allowance. 

Bantwal described the turmoil in the industry — fueled in part by fears over how artificial intelligence could hurt software businesses — as a “price discovery” moment where investors are figuring out their appetite for illiquidity. “If the net result of this is people are seeing headlines and they realize they aren’t comfortable with the risk they’re taking, and the people remaining behind are the people who want to be there, I think those people are going to benefit from higher spreads,” Bantwal said. Long-term, that’s “healthy” for the industry, he added. 
Brad Marshall, global head of private credit strategies at Blackstone, addressed the firm’s move Monday to allow investors to redeem a record 7.9% of shares from its flagship private credit fund. He said the vehicles help meet liquidity needs and are functioning as they should.
“In a normal year, our portfolio should turn over about 20%,” Marshall said on the same panel about liquidity options for the fund, BCRED. “In credit terms, that’s $16 billion of turnover liquidity.”
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