Could experiencing a health pandemic aid in understanding the nature of financial crisis? It might, for example, help to discriminate between different narratives that claim to do so. In this spirit, two influential accounts of the near-collapse of shadow banking in the US financial crisis of 2008 are analysed: one developed by Mark Gertler and Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and the other presented by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission of the US Congress. Using a common two-sector framework, key features of these contrasting accounts of the market for banking services are presented, along with their corresponding diagnoses of what precipitated financial crisis. To see what the experience of Covid might imply about their relative credibility, four aspects of the current pandemic are considered: how it began from a small biological shock; how it gets spread by contagion; the significance of externalities; and how it may end with a vaccine. But the reader is left to form his or her own judgement.

在了解金融危机的性质时是否可以体验健康大流行的援助？例如，它可能有助于区分声称这样做的不同叙述。本着这种精神，分析了两个影响力大的影子银行在2008年美国金融危机中的崩溃的说法：一个是Mark Gertler和Nobuhiro Kiyotaki提出的，另一个是美国国会金融危机调查委员会提出的。使用通用的两部门框架，介绍了这些银行服务市场对比帐户的关键特征，以及对导致金融危机的原因的相应诊断。为了了解Covid的经验可能暗示其相对信誉，我们考虑了当前大流行的四个方面：它是如何从一次小的生物冲击中引发的；它是如何通过传染传播的；外部性的重要性；以及如何以疫苗结束。但是读者可以自己决定。