13. The following passage appeared in the Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in The United States, submitted to Congress in January 2011:

In the early part of the 20th century, we erected a series of protections—the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort, federal deposit insurance, ample regulations—to provide a bulwark against the panics that had regularly plagued America’s banking system in the 19th century. Yet, over the past 30-plus years, we permitted the growth of a shadow banking system—opaque and laden with shortterm debt—that rivaled the size of the traditional banking system. Key components of the market—

for example, the multitrillion-dollar repo lending market, off-balance-sheet entities, and the use of over-the-counter derivatives—were hidden from view, without the protections we had constructed to prevent financial meltdowns. We had a 21st-century financial system with 19th-century safeguards.

Explain what this passage means.