The private credit headlines of March 2026 are striking — redemption gates, JPMorgan markdowns, warnings of rising defaults. But the dominant framing misidentifies what is actually breaking. A specific product design has failed: semi-liquid retail vehicles that offered quarterly liquidity against 4–7 year corporate loans. That is not a private credit crisis. It is a maturity mismatch crisis. Meanwhile the data that actually matters — PIK activation rates, junior tranches marked above distressed senior debt in the same borrower — is underreported. The bank-NBFI back-leverage channel is where stress crosses the regulatory perimeter, and the transmission mechanism is more precise than most coverage suggests. And the European financing gap left by Basel IV constrained bank balance sheets has not changed because US BDCs got gated. This post works through the evidence and the implications for regulators and researchers