Medias: Private Credit and the Shadow Banking Crisis – “In this week’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump played the hits. He demonized immigrants, he lied about the state of the economy, chastised the Supreme Court over tariffs and called Democrats “crazy.” As evidence of his magnificence he of course touted the stock market, not once but three times – But there is one word that was completely absent from his economic picture. One concept that should be front and center in any honest accounting of where the risks to this economy actually live. Deregulation. Because while Trump was taking victory laps about the Dow, his administration has been dismantling the guardrails that were put in place after the last time Wall Street blew up the economy…In the wake of 2008, we put regulations in place to prevent a repeat performance — capitalization requirements, stress tests, transparency rules. Then we sent an ungodly sum of money into the financial system, bought back troubled assets from the big banks, and lowered rates dramatically to allow them to deleverage. Economically speaking, it was a masterclass in crisis management. The financial system survived. But Main Street got left out in the cold. Foreclosures kept coming. Wages stagnated. The people who caused the crisis were made whole, and the people who suffered from it were told to be patient. That profound political and moral failure is arguably why Donald Trump won in 2016, and why he won again in 2024. We failed to learn the lesson. So here we are. And the new thing that financial titans, Wall Street observers, and the more astute economic commentators have been whispering about is something called private credit. It hit the mainstream last year with some very public bankruptcies that revealed shaky lending practices, massive over-leverage, and some genuinely shady dealings. You may remember Jamie Dimon — CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States — making his infamous ‘cockroaches’ comment. Where you see one, there’s probably more. That sentiment refuses to die and kind of haunts Wall Street to this day…”