A thought inspiring article, entitled Hierarchical Edge Bundles: Visualization of Adjacency Relations in Hierarchical Data, by Danny Holten, would provide a possible way to visualize the flow of capital via hierarchical financial networks. The hierarchy would consist of governments, banks, exchanges, and traders. With such a visual tool, one may be able to identify connections in the network which are vital to the entire system. The more densely connected regions of the network would represent areas for officials to focus their efforts in either preventing a crash or ensuring a “safe landing” for an inflated economy.
For some reason, I found that the following picture would be perfect for visualizing the hierarchy of big institutions. The bigger bubbles would represent the larger institutions.