That is why it is "hidden".
This is very much like the 2008 disaster. You effectively have debt laundering happening whereby speculative income / debt is manufactured into higher grade than it is by passing through multiple parties / steps / debt-like vehicles that look independent but in fact incorporate cumulative risk built on highly correlated factors. Downstream party D has no visibility that the specific uncertainty emanating from party A upstream is 100% correlated with their own risks, along with parties B and C through which the liability passed on the way to them. What looks like independent risks are actually all the same risk and completely fragile to a single event that has quite a high probability of occurring.
A few "hidden" tricks : https://latentstate.net/the-hidden-ledger/
I think your 2008 comparison breaks down here
- Many underlying obligations are backed by insanely profitable companies.
- Financing involves long-term leases rather than short-term funding.
- Rating agencies analyze these off-balance-sheet obligations.
I think you are describing quite accurately what happened in 2008, but I don't think the parallel is as strong as you claim it is.
I'm not aware of anything like that happening right now. Do you have any examples?