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The Financial Crisis Of 2007-08

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During the lead up to the financial crisis of 2007-08, a term was coined to describe what was happening in the financial markets. The term was: Shadow Banking System. The creation of the term was attributed to economist and money manager, Paul McCulley, who described it as a large segment of financial intermediation that is routed outside the balance sheets of regulated commercial banks and other depository institutions (St. Louis Fed). In simpler terms, institutions that are in the shadow banking system are not regulated like commercial banks, and carry more risk due to their investments. Examples of shadow banking institutions are money market funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc. During the early 1990s, most American citizens didn’t know or never heard of money market funds or mutual funds; typically, the only people who knew of the “shadow banking system” were most likely senior officers at the big banks or individuals who were experts in the financial markets. However, that all changed. At the turn of the century, the shadow banking system started to gain steam and was growing at a faster rate than traditional banks. At the peak of its growth, right before the financial crisis, the shadow banking system, in terms of liabilities, was about 1.5-2 times larger than traditional banks (St. Louis Fed). Before the Financial Crisis, many Americans were investing their money in money market funds or mutual funds, and if you had a substantial amount of money laying around, you

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