Dana El-Kurd

All right, to get a sense of the complexity of this, right, the congressional report, like the accepted terminology for this is not shadow banks.

No, it's non-bank financial intermediation.

Now, what the fuck is that?

This is where this episode goes completely off the rails, because the components of what count as intermediation are so complicated, I am not going to try to describe it until literally the end of this.

I mean, is it like, what is Venmo officially?

Venmo's not a bank, but it provides financial services.

Actually, it might.

Because that's like a financial intermediary, right?

Yeah, it might technically be a non-bank.

I don't know what the regulatory structure is.

It's not legally a bank.

Yeah, I think that technically is one.

Score one for Molly.

Yeah, but okay, so this is going to get really bad.

Okay, so when I first started researching this episode, right, the first thing that I click on is the Federal Reserve's chart of how the shadow banking sector works compared to the normal banking sector.

Molly, you have seen this, because I posted it as a joke in our group chat.

This chart...

I have like a very, very large, like it is like a big, normal-ass sized monitor that I like to do my work on.

I had to zoom in to 380% just to make out the letters that label the boxes on this chart.

If you want to read it, you have to zoom in to 500%.