The financial crisis of 2008 was dubbed the “Great Unwind” or the “Great Unwinding.” To “unwind” is a financial term meaning “to close a position” or “to correct a mistake.” Stefan-Michael Staimann and Susanne Knips of Dresdner Kleinwort predicted the 2008 events in a February 2007 study they titled “The Great Unwind.”
 
The term “Great Unwind” was used again in 2013, as financial analysts feared the unwinding that would result from the end of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program.
 
 
The Free Dictionary
Unwind
1. See: Close a position.
2. To correct a mistake. For example, if an investor instructs his/her broker to sell a security and the broker instead buys it, the broker must re-sell the security, and pay the client what he/she may have lost in the mistake. This process is known as unwinding.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Finance - Germany’s Great Unwinding - As more and more companies sell off noncore assets, the old network of cross-shareholdings is unraveling—And productivity is on the rise
Publisher: [New York, etc., McGraw-Hill]
Edition/Format: Article Article : English
Publication: Business week. (October 18, 2004): 72
Database: ArticleFirst
 
Naked Capitalism 
Friday, February 9, 2007
This is the Way the World Ends (Hedge Fund Edition)
A gloomy but all-too-plausible scenario from Stefan-Michael Staimann and Susanne Knips of Dresdner Kleinwort regarding how the current hedge fund boom might (in their view, will) lead to a nasty bust they call “The Great Unwind.”
 
Their core observation is that, despite their apparent diversity, many hedge funds strategies are similar at their core: they look for anomalous prices or price relationships, most often when a spread is “wide” by historical standards and can be expected to narrow (this is a crude explanation but broadly accurate).
 
Naked Capitalism 
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Citigroup: The “Great Unwind” Has Begun
Citigroup has declared a very bad scenario first forecast by analysts Stefan-Michael Staimann and Susanne Knips of Dresdner Kleinwort in February 2007, “The Great Unwind,” to be in progress. To their credit, they made this bold call months before the credit contraction began. They viewed it as an inevitable outcome of the hedge fund boom: ...
 
Google Books
U.S. News & World Report
Volume 145, Issues 5-9
2008
Pg. 118:
On Wall Street, they’re calling it the Great Unwind.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The trillion dollar meltdown : easy money, high rollers, and the great credit crash
Author: Charles R Morris
Publisher: New York : PublicAffairs, ©2008.
Edition/Format: Book : English : 1st edView all editions and formats
Summary: We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. According to Charles R. Morris, the astronomical leverage at investment banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. The crash, when it comes, will have no firebreaks. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will come crashing down with it. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown explains how we got here, and what is about to happen.
Contents:
The great unwinding
 
OCLC WorldCat record 
Dumb money : how our greatest financial minds bankrupted the nation
Author: Daniel Gross
Publisher: New York : Free Press, ©2009.
Edition/Format: Book : English : Free Press pbk. ed
Summary: The author, who writes the “Money culture” column at Newsweek, examines the financial meltdown of 2008.
Contents:
The great unwinding.
   
New York (NY) Times
The Great Unwinding
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 11, 2009
Here’s one way to look at the politics of our era: We’ve moved from The Age of Leverage to The Great Unwinding.
   
Time magazine
The Great Unwind begins
By Barbara Kiviat Feb. 18, 2010
(...)
And so the Great Unwind begins. In the wake of the financial-system meltdown, the Federal Reserve, like other central banks around the world, flooded markets with ridiculous amounts of liquidity in a desperate attempt to keep recession from rolling into depression.
   
Business Insider
The Great Unwind
Michael Ashton, E-piphany Feb. 23, 2011, 5:43 PM
(...)
The Fed’s problem with the Great Unwind to come isn’t merely that the unwind methods are untested. The far bigger problem is whether there is a will to unwind when asset prices are declining and there is an energy shock – or some other situation that isn’t perfect for the unwind. I don’t believe there is, but we may find out.
 
MarketWatch—The Trading Deck
May 29, 2013, 9:21 a.m. EDT
Will the Great Rotation become the Great Unwind?
By John Nyaradi
In recent weeks, we have been reading about how the Fed’s quantitative-easing program has brought a “great rotation” out of bonds and into stock funds as the major American stock indices continue to hit new record highs on a daily basis. Despite all the hype about “the great rotation,” reports from ICI reveal that during the first quarter of 2013, bond-fund inflows were $69 billion, compared with $19 billion going into stock funds. Beyond that, what has been hyped as a great rotation could soon be turning into a great unwind as QE magic begins to wear off.
 
Financial Standard (Australia)
The great unwind
Friday, 21 June 2013 10:15am
By Benjamin Ong
(...)
There’ll be more volatility and losses in store for the bond market should the Fed carry out its tapering threat.
 
But if it does, this would only mean one thing - that the Fed is confident that the economy - the US and the world—is able to sustain its recovery with lesser accommodation.
 
Miles Franklin
The Great Unwind Has Finally Arrived
Author : Bill Holter
Published: June 24th, 2013
(...)
This upcoming week could be a doozy.  So many potential train wrecks from so many different directions to keep your eyes on all of them.  Just remember that “credit” is what runs everything and it looks like “credit” is now at the center stage of problems.  Should rates continue to rise this week in U.S. Treasuries you should expect to see some very major firms run into trouble.  This time around it will be real as there are no solvent white knights left with the ability to leverage up and save the day.  The U.S. Treasury and Fed are now in the crosshairs, they need to catch a bid this week or they will be at the center of the biggest one time margin call ever!
   
Zero Hedge
Market Update: Surveying The Damage So Far
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/24/2013 09:39 -0400
(...)
Despite a sudden rampaplooza across FX and equity markets in the pre-open, things do not look pretty as the great rotation is replaced by the great unwind.