Half of the nation’s 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Shadow banking” which can be defined as any “levered up non-bank investment conduits, vehicles and structures” has reached a record high of $67 trillion globally, reports CNBC.
If the definition doesn’t work for you, examples would be hedge funds, private equity companies, money-market funds and cash-rich organizations that lend government bonds for banks.
Shadow banking is largely unregulated and CNBC is naturally calling for more regulation of it. What CNBC et al fails to comprehend is that all “money” basically is, is a communication tool and hence is as hard to regulate as any word or idea. If the word “dollar” loses its meaning it will be replaced by other words such as “yuan” or “yen”. There will be suffering but it won’t be the wealthy, healthy and able doing it.