Shadow Banking

ECON 2301 Principles of Macroeconomics Time: Th 7:05 pm – 9:45 pm Synonym: 40512 Section: 023 Room: NRG2 2120

This article was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives and it was written by two Assistant Professors of Economics: Nancy Qian and Nathan Nunn. The former taught at Yale

Our economy is a machine that is ran by humans. A machine can only be as good as the person who makes it. This makes our economy susceptible to human error. A couple years ago the United States faced one of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which was the Great Recession. The Great Recession was a severe economic downturn that occurred in 2008 following the burst of the housing market. The government tried passing bills to see if anything would help it from becoming another Great Depression. Trying to aid the government was the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve went through a couple strategies in order to help the economy recover. The Federal Reserve provided three major strategies to start moving the economy in a better direction. The first strategy was primarily focused on the central bank’s role of the lender of last resort. The second strategy was meant to provide provision of liquidity directly to borrowers and investors in key credit markets. The last strategy was for the Federal Reserve to expand its open market operations to support the credit markets still working, as well as trying to push long term interest rates down. Since time has passed on since the Great Recession it has been a long road. In this essay we will take a time to reflect on these strategies to see how they helped.

When you drive up to your bank or walk up to your teller, your main goal is to complete your transaction and move on with your day. The last thing on your mind is how that transaction is taking place. You don’t care what happens behind the scenes as long as your money is where it needs to be and is safe. As the banking and finance industry has transformed, so has the process of how your money is handled. To accompany those changes, regulators and lawmakers create laws designed to protect consumers, banks, and the economy as a whole. As you will learn, the history of the banking industry has changed drastically over the last two thousand years and even more so in the last century with the advance of technology. It only makes sense that those lawmakers must continue to update and invent new regulation to further protect those interested parties. My goal is to demonstrate just how rapidly and radically the finance industry has changed and how new elements being introduced to finance and banking will adapt the industry and the regulation.

In the event that the American individuals really saw how the Federal Reserve framework functions and what it has done to us, they would be shouting for it to be nullified promptly. It is a framework that was composed by global brokers for the advantage of worldwide investors, and it is methodically devastating the American individuals. The Federal Reserve framework is the essential motivation behind why the cash has declined in worth by well more than 95 percent and the national obligation has become more than 5000 times bigger in the course of recent years. The Fed makes the "blasts" and the "busts", and they

Now, many of these banking groups are owned by foreign investors, despite attempted safeguards. This ownership has provided investors leverage and influence over the actions of the government because the government owes an exorbitant amount to these banks (Daniel Lederman). The same argument can be made about the United States’ government. This influence can be seen across the board as many decisions now seem to favor only a select few, forgetting about the ramifications for the many.

Since the onset of the financial crisis 2008, the sovereign debt crisis in western economies and the new financial regulation with Basel III coming up, the financial industry faces the challenge of reinventing itself. The ring-fence for Commercial and Investment Banking, and new economic and regulatory capital requirements will determine the kinds of products banks will be able to distribute. It will have a huge impact in the Investment Banking business, which will suffer tough regulation and supervisory procedures. At the same time, credit risk models will be reviewed because they have failed to predict the crisis of 2008. The current financial and economic crisis doesn’t have any precedent in the past.

The United States of America’s financial system comprises of the banking system, financial markets and nonbank financial institutions. (Lee, 2001) Banking system furthermore consists of the Federal Reserve System, foreign banks, commercial banks, offshore banks, credit unions and saving institutions. Financial markets consist of debt and money markets, equities markets and futures and options markets. Lastly, nonbank financial institutions consist of asset-based finance companies, commercial lending companies and insurance companies. This paper is an endeavor to understand the workings and structure of the Federal Reserve Banks of USA.

In this essay I am going to discuss the effects of shadow banking on the recent financial crisis of 2007-8. Shadow banking was one of the major causes of the financial crisis since it was the subprime mortgages which was the first trigger of the collapse in the banking system. Through this essay I am to achieve a detailed analysis of why the shadow banking was one of the causes in the financial crisis and why was it not prevented by any regulation enforced. The basis of shadow banking system is that it occurs when financial intermediaries conduct transformation of maturity, credit and liquidity without having access to the central bank liquidity guarantees or even public sector credit. Furthermore shadowing banking includes a complicate process to reach maturity transformation since the process is done over various steps in the system.

Theories about how the economy works and what will happen in the economy where there is monetary policy or fiscal policy intervention are appropriate in assisting policy-makers understand the possible implications of decisions they make or are under consideration. However, they are rarely complete models and often outcomes cannot be predicted. Reintroduction of a theory suggests that new evidence in support of the theory has been reported.

There will always be someone who takes control of things. Those who are innately dominant will often possess a strong influence over others; some people in society have a tendency to lead while others follow. However, when the effect of power is negative, it becomes able to destroy the very thing it has control of. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the author, Paulo Freire, highlights such negativities in the classroom setting in an education system he calls the “banking concept”. This idea prevents active thinking and instead, the students absorb empty facts, keeping them stored in their memory. Although he discusses the alternative, more positive “problem-posing” concept, the banking principle seems to be more prominent in Chinua Achebe’s Things

In this essay I am going to discuss the effects of shadow banking on the recent financial crisis of 2007-8. Shadow banking was one of the major causes of the financial crisis since it was the subprime mortgages which was the first trigger of the collapse in the banking system. Through this essay I am to achieve a detailed analysis of why the shadow banking was one of the causes in the financial crisis and why was it not prevented by any regulation enforced. The basis of shadow banking system is that it occurs when financial intermediaries conduct transformation of maturity, credit and liquidity without having access to the central bank liquidity guarantees or even public sector credit. Maturity transformation: obtaining short-term funds to

The recent recession lasting from 2007 until 2009, and the effects of which are still highly visible in the U.S. economy, led the Federal Reserve to use new and largely untested methods for protecting the country from a total financial collapse. The new strategy, which blurs the lines between monetary and fiscal policy, had been attempted only once before, and is open to criticism from several difference angles. This report documents the history, purpose, and controversy surrounding quantitative easing as a strategy to mitigate the effects of the recent recession. After considering these factors, the conclusion is drawn that quantitative easing was a modestly successful policy, yet one which should not be employed again. Although

Critically examine the debate between Keynesian and classical economists on the efficiency of the market mechanism and the efficiency of government policy intervention. What lessons can be drawn from the 2007-2009 global financial and economic crisis

Offshore banking is the action of having a bank account outside of the country of residence. Typically it offers many advantages like greater privacy, low or no taxation, easy access to deposits and protection against local, political, or financial instability, but has also been popular for its use of illegal practices like money laundering and tax evasion. Those against offshore banking view its illegal reputation and predict that it will only cause further damage like providing fund for terrorism or holding underground economies. However other experts believe that offshore banking is a safe haven for depositors and has had a substantial impact on the international economy in today’s world.