Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW), the German state-guaranteed development agency, justified the creation of its dollar funding programme by selling more than half of its $3bn (€3.4bn) five-year bond issue to US investors.

KfW marketed itself heavily in the US, where investors already have a raft of huge triple-A rated borrowers to lend to, including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the US mortgage refinancing agencies. However, the funding requirements of these entities, which run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, mean that US investors are heavily exposed to them.