A Comparative Analysis of Financial Intermediation in the Euro Area and the United States

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the eurozone financial system was profoundly reconfigured. In the absence of the key factors that supported the development of market finance in the United States, however, the way the European economy is financed has not been radically transformed. While central banks' interventions were adapted to the respective characteristics of the financial systems on both sides of the Atlantic, recent crises have reduced their polarisation. Finally, it appears that the financing structures of economies do not have as much effect on the nature of the counterparts of the money supply as on the size of the latter in proportion to national wealth. Two unique features of the US (the relative co-occurrence of capital inflows and outflows and loan securitisation) help explain this phenomenon.