The role of corporate governance in macro-prudential regulation of systemic risk

Abstract

Global regulators only began to think programmatically about systemic risk when the enormity of the GFC’s damage to the financial system became clear. Before then, a handful of systemic events in US financial history after the introduction of FDIC insurance periodically focused attention on the topic. Systemic failures had been a recurring staple of the period prior to the inception of FDIC insurance, leading eventually to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The term ‘TBTF’ originated with the failure of Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984, the largest bank failure until the GFC.1 However, an extended period of stable economic growth in the US since the 1980s, known as the ‘Great Moderation’, helped downgrade financial instability to a secondary concern of regulators and other policymakers.