A good proxy for the expansion and/or contraction of the shadow banking market is the change in the amount of commercial paper outstanding. Successive rounds of QE--represented by the expansion of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet--have had a stimulative, but short lasting impact on the expansion of shadow banking credit. Below we show the 3-month change in the Fed's balance sheet alongside the amount of commercial paper outstanding. The amount of commercial paper outstanding has dropped by $100 billion since the third week in May (when we first heard the word "taper"). From this perspective, the shadow banking system is now exerting a negative credit impulse into the US economy.