Sympathy for the Federal (Reserve)

Everything you wanted to know about Shadow Banking...but were afraid you didn't have the time.  Thanks to four heretofore unknown (to us anyway) staffers of the New York Fed; Zoltan Pozsar, Tobias Adrian, Adam Ashcraft and Hayley Boesky.

Shadow banks are financial intermediaries that conduct maturity, credit, and liquidity transformation without explicit access to central bank liquidity or public sector credit guarantees. Examples of shadow banks include finance companies, asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) conduits, structured investment vehicles (SIVs), credit hedge funds, money market mutual funds, securities lenders, limited-purpose finance companies (LPFCs), and the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Our paper documents the institutional features of shadow banks, discusses their economic roles, and analyzes their relation to the traditional banking system. Our description and taxonomy of shadow bank entities and shadow bank activities are accompanied by “shadow banking maps” that schematically represent the funding flows of the shadow banking system.

And they aren't just whistling Dixie about those 'maps' (scroll down to the appendices to see them in living color).  They more resemble the blueprint for a nuclear submarine (hat tip to anonymous Northwestern economist) than a financial system flow-chart.