Non-bank financial institutions pose an increasing risk to America's big banks, economists said on Thursday in a post on the New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics blog. During times of heightened market-wide stress, demands for liquidity mount on banks as non-banks seek term loans and lines of credit. This escalating reliance on big banks could result in "vectors of shock transmission and amplification, forcing authorities to intervene and do so en masse," the researchers said in the post, adding that the extent of these market disruptions "could be rather severe."