The Evolution of Banks and Financial Intermediation: Framing the Analysis

hile the term “the Great Recession” has been loosely applied to almost every economic downturn in the past twenty years, the crisis of 2007-09 has—more than most recessions—lived up to that name. The crisis has been felt across virtually all economic sectors and in all parts of the world. Still, if its effects have been widespread, its origins were narrower: the crisis had its roots in the financial sector and manifested itself first through disruptions in the system of financial intermediation. This story is in itself not new. Many economic crises in history have been the result of financial crises, and many financial crises in turn originated as failures of financial intermediaries. And in every instance the reference has been to banks, in their essential role as deposit-taking entities involved primarily in the business of lending. Thus, Reinhart and Rogoff (2008) identify some thirty separate instances of banking crises across many countries and at different points in time during the last 100 years. Indeed, the terms bank and financial intermediary have normally been used interchangeably. However, what was new in this last crisis is that we witnessed many instances of financial