Securities Law Commons^™

Running In The Shadows, Joshua A. Craven

joshua a craven

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 can be characterized as a run on the shadow banking system. Over several decades, the United States slowly and quietly developed a massive shadow banking system—a complex chain of borrowers and investors entering into repo agreements financed by money-market mutual funds and primary dealers, collateralized with asset-backed securities derived from mortgages originated by lenders and securitized through special purpose vehicles, then purchased by banks with capital raised by entering into repo agreements. For years, this chain of transactions operated to meet banks’ short-term liquidity needs, until uncertainty in the value of the asset-backed securities used …