The ‘shadow banking’ sector can be an ill-defined financial segment that expands and contracts credit beyond your regulatory perimeter.

• It had been critical in the build-up and demise of the credit boom.

While much reduced since 2008, in america its size still exceeded bank assets in 2011.

• What have we learned because the crisis on shadow banking?

By definition, shadow banking isn’t an accurate category. In this column, I concentrate on financial intermediaries that take credit risk.