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In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, transparency became a rhetorical token used to provide a solution to financial problems. This study examines how transparency materialized in the context of the European securitization industry, which was largely blamed for the credit crunch. The authors show that although transparency was broadly associated with a political call for financial system reform, in the European securitization industry it provided the basis on which to repurpose its market infrastructure. The authors introduce the concept of transparency work to show that transparency is a market achievement organized as a standardization network of heterogeneous actors aiming at establishing a new calculative infrastructure for managing credit risk. Combining insights from information infrastructure research and Economic Sociology, the authors contribute to a distributed and networked understanding of information infrastructure development.

We examine whether loan securitization has an impact on bank efficiency. Using a sample of large US commercial banks from 2002 to 2012, we find that bank loan securitization has a significant and positive impact on bank efficiency, and this relationship is stronger for banks with higher capital ratios, higher default risk, and lower level of liquidity and diversification. Our results are robust to Heckman self-selection correction and difference-in-difference (DID) analysis. In addition, these results are found mainly in non-mortgage loan securitizations but not in mortgage loan securitizations. Finally, we show that loan sales also have a positive impact on bank efficiency.

Among divergent approaches to understand the global financial crisis, Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis has gained increased attention. In part, the chapter draws upon Minsky's notion that the seeds of instability are sown when banks, households, and firms move from hedge to speculative and then into Ponzi financial positions. Financial innovations such as securitisation contribute to this transformation. In addition, the paper will discuss the findings arising from an analysis of interviews that focus on securitisation related issues after the sub-prime crisis with practitioners who were closely involved in regulation and risk-management. The paper highlights the need for fundamental reform in the financial sector with a more consistent regulatory platform and enhanced supervision, to facilitate rapid healing from the damage arising from the financial crisis in Australia.

Purpose – This chapter highlights how counter-radicalization, as a manifestation of diffuse securitizing, impacts the work of Muslim civil society organizations (CSOs) in Canada.

Methodology – The author presents how Muslim communities and their civil society representatives experience and adapt to the pressures from counter-radicalization policies. Data for the analysis are drawn from 16 semi-structured, anonymized interviews with managers and board members of prominent Muslim CSOs that are based in urban centers in Canada with high density of Muslim populations.

Findings – Though counter-radicalization policies are advanced under the rubric of community-orientedness and risk governance, security discourse and practice constructs radicalization as a problem within Muslim communities treating them as suspects who are “potentially radical.” Despite this framing, Muslim CSOs are cooperating with state security agencies in counter-radicalization efforts but are doing so cognizant of the immense power the state exerts over them in such “partnerships.” CSOs are raising questions about the selective nature of security practice which views Muslims as dangerous and violent but fails to fully acknowledge their reality as victims of Islamophobic violence. CSOs are using anti-racism, anti-oppression, and rights-based frames to call out the discriminatory treatment of Muslims under national security.

Originality/Value – The author’s study contributes to a community perspective in counterterrorism and counter-radicalization research that is dominated by analyses from “above.” By sharing the experiences of Canadian Muslim CSOs under counter-radicalization, the author illustrates the practice of “diffuse securitizing” and how it limits the work of civil society in liberal democracies.

The current crisis in the mortgage securitization industry highlights significant failures in our models of how markets work and our political will, organizational capability, and ideological desire to intervene in markets. This article shows that one of the main sources of failure has been the lack of a coherent understanding of how these markets came into existence, how tactics and strategies of the principal firms in these markets have evolved over time, and how we ended up with the economic collapse of the main firms. It seeks to provide some insight into these processes by compiling both historical and quantitative data on the emergence and spread of these tactics across the largest investment banks and their principal competitors from the mortgage origination industry. It ends by offering some policy proscriptions based on the analysis.

The analyses of civil–military relations during public health emergencies are traditionally confined to applications in international and humanitarian action related to conflict and disaster. The expansive global response to the COVID-19 pandemic fused health and national security issues, and such a response involved extensive collaboration between the military and civil sectors. The expanded scope and centrality of the military in government pandemic response have been noted globally, and Southeast Asia presented interesting developments. This study investigates how the pandemic affected civil–military relations in the region by looking at the cases of the Philippines and Malaysia. First, it assesses the extent to which the pandemic has been framed within the security language through war analogies that rationalised military response. Second, it investigates the roles of the military in the respective governments’ public health emergency response, providing clues on how the increased military intervention affected people’s trust and confidence in public institutions during the pandemic. The study finds that securitising the pandemic correlated to expanding the military’s power and scope in the government response, but notes that civil–military relations remained dependent on the historical roles of the armed forces in politics and society. The two countries have similarly framed the pandemic as a security threat, but the military’s participation in Malaysia’s response shows development opportunities, while the case of the Philippines reveals how a military-centric pandemic response could lead to deleterious effects.

This chapter outlines the need for a sustainable financial system in the wake and aftermath of the recent financial crises. Beginning with the widely accepted definitions of the financial system and the roles of the many participants in the system, we ask whether the financial system has lived up to expectations. Of particular interest is whether the financial system has fulfilled its obligations in the area of provision of credit, liquidity, and risk-management services.

We review the Neoclassical Economics, the Institutional and the functional approaches to the design of a financial system with a view to understanding the recent lack of stability exhibited by the system. We identify the many financial innovations that have been proliferating in recent years due to advances and improvements in computer technology, valuation techniques, and financial engineering. We highlight the deleterious impact of the financialization of economies and excessive development of derivative markets. After defining financialization, we give specific examples of the nature and impact of cat-bonds, securitized subprime loans, and credit-default swaps and their role in the propagation of the recent financial crisis. Finally, we propose some courses of action to secure the global financial system.

We identify ten challenges in achieving a sustainable financial system in the future and stress the need for all stakeholders to work to put the financial world in order and to restore confidence in the financial system.

Scholars and practitioners might take into account these dimensions in their courses and their behaviors.

This approach participates to rebuild the financial system. The aim over the long term is to re-embed finance; we need to put finance with respect to both economy and society.

Arguments in this chapter are straightforward; there are things that regulators are implementing; for others, nothing has been decided yet. This chapter gives an academic perspective to help authorities to regulate banking and financial activities and products.

With the help of financial engineering – and equipped with the modern technique of risk management – securitisation was supposed to identify and evaluate risks and parcel them out to informed parties who could bear them. In hindsight, we can see that this somewhat simplistic thesis – espoused by market participants as well as the academic promoters of modern techniques of risk management – seemed to promise a great deal more than it could ultimately deliver. At this juncture, however, the danger of regulatory over-reaction – which might be throwing the baby (financial innovation) out with the bath-water (overlooking/under-pricing of risk) – is very real and (in my view) calls for policy measures of this sort should be resisted firmly not only by market participants but also by regulators. This is not to say that regulation should be seen as immune from responsibility in the unfolding of the current credit crisis (quite the opposite would more likely be closer to the truth). As we shall see below (Section “Financial Crisis and Credit Ratings Debacle in SF”), the best risk-management practices – and related tools available before the crisis – provided enough ammunition to caution against the uncertainty surrounding risk assessment for some categories of SF products. However, the increasing complexity embedded in an increasing number of deals did provide genuine new challenges even to best risk-management practices.