Foroohar, R. (2014) “Where the Next Financial Crisis Will Come From“, Time Magazine, 03 Νοεμβρίου.
The next financial crisis won’t come from the banking sector. That’s the message implicit in the latest report on the global financial sector from the Financial Stability Board, the group that monitors what’s happening with the world’s money flow. Instead, it’s very likely to come from the massive and growing “shadow banking” sector—an area mostly untouched by our government regulators.
New numbers show that the shadow banking industry—which includes everything from money market funds to real-estate trusts to hedge funds—grew by a whopping $5 trillion in 2013 to $75 trillion. If you look at the sector as a percentage of the global economy, that’s nearly what is was pre-crisis, back in 2007.
That means many of the risks that used to be held on bank balance sheets have moved to the non-regulated areas of finance. This says a number of important things. First and perhaps most importantly, all the backslapping in Washington about how much “safer” our banking system is now than it was six years ago is meaningless. While banks are still plenty risky, increasingly, new financial risk isn’t being held in banks — it’s being held in places that regulators can’t see it. (see my debate with Treasury over that fact here.) That Dodd-Frank financial regulation wasn’t able to do more about this is a real pity.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Dixon, H. (2014) “A New Euro Crisis?“, Reuters Breaking Views, 20 Οκτωβρίου.
- Verney, S., Bosco, A. & Lobo, M. C. (Eds.) (2014) “Southern Europe and the Financial Earthquake – Coping with the First Phase of the International Crisis“, South European Society and Politics, Routledge Publications, Οκτώβριος.
- Galbraith, J. K., The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth, Simon and Shuster, New York: Σεπτέμβριος 2014.