By Simon van Norden

Today, we're fortunate to have Simon van Norden, Professor of Finance at HEC Montréal (École des Hautes Études Commerciales), as a guest blogger.

"Once you've seen one financial market crisis...you've seen one financial market crisis."

-- Attributed to Federal Reserve Board Governor Kevin Warsh by former US Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Phillip Swagel in The Financial Crisis: an Inside View, March 2009, p. 4.

The financial crisis has set a lot of records so far; it's certainly the worst US banking crisis of my lifetime. Some, as suggested by the above quote, see such crises as unique events; each one is singular and there's not much to be learned about how to handle one from looking at past crises. For example, there's no precedent that I know of for a banking crisis involves the failure of the biggest counterparties for credit default swaps.

This post provides links to some thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Paul McCulley (Pimco - Global Central Bank Focus): The shadow banking system and Hyman Minsky’s economic journey, May 2009. As we look for answers about the current financial crisis, it’s clear that creative financing played a massive role in propelling the global financial system to hazy new heights - before leading the way into the depths of a systemic crisis. But how did financing get so creative? It didn’t happen within the confines of a regulated banking system, which submits to strict regulatory requirements in exchange for the safety of government backstopping. Instead, financing got so creative through the rise of a “shadow banking system,” which operated legally, yet almost completely outside the realm of bank regulation. The rise of this system drove