Financial Services Industry in the US - PEST Framework Analysis

The U.S. financial markets consist of many separate markets for diverse products offered on a range of trading platforms and exchanges.  Among the many products traded are fixed-income securities, equities, foreign exchange and derivatives.

Historical data from the United States shows surprisingly large variations in the economic importance of finance in this country. It was high in the 1920s, but, after a continuous collapse in the 1930s and 40s, it was down to only 2.5% of GDP in 1947. It recovered slowly until the late 1970s, and then grew more quickly to reach almost 8% of GDP in 2006.

The US economy fell into recession in December 2007, with growth contracting 6.3 percent in the last quarter of 2008 and unemployment soaring to 8.1 percent. To get the US banks to cope with this, U.S. banking regulators have launched a ""stress test"" program to assess the largest banks' ability cope with the possibility of a deeper recession in which the unemployment rate climbs above 10 percent by 2010. The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has already closed four more banks and one credit union, taking the number of failures this year to 29. That is up from 25 banks in all of 2008 and three in 2007.

Aruvian Research analyzes the Financial Services Industry in the United States in a PEST Framework Analysis. A PEST analysis is concerned with the environmental influences on a business. The acronym stands for the Political, Economic, Social and Technological issues that could affect the strategic development of a business. Identifying PEST influences is a useful way of summarizing the external environment in which a business operates.