If you read the actual report they quote, it says no such thing: <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/monetary-tightening-us-bank-fragility-2023-mark-market-losses" rel="nofollow">https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...</a><p>> On the other hand, SVB had a disproportional share of uninsured funding: only 1 percent of banks had higher uninsured leverage. Combined, losses and uninsured leverage provide incentives for an SVB uninsured depositor run. We compute similar incentives for the sample of all U.S. banks. Even if only half of uninsured depositors decide to withdraw, almost 190 banks are at a potential risk of impairment to insured depositors, with potentially $300 billion of insured deposits at risk.<p>Having fewer <i>investment</i> assets than liabilities does not necessarily make a bank insolvent - but it should be very concerning how much money has been left parked in low-interest uninsured bank accounts.
They are prepping us to justify more takeovers and sell offs to the big banks. A handful of big banks are what is needed to implement CBDC. It is kind of similar to how the government prefers a handful of tech companies which they can control.<p>Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook<p>Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, BofA, Wells Fargo
The article is typical alarmist clickbait but there is some truth in there.<p>Anyone with half a brain already saw there would be a crisis when the fed reduced rates to zero and started passing out stimulus checks to both people and corporates. Inflation was obvious but I didn't know the fed would do a 180 and started raising rate like Michael Jackson raising zombies. They obviously made a choice and it seems inflation was a big enough threat to slow the entire economy to a crawl.<p>The responses to an event will always be lagging in the economy. Inflation took a few months to become a serious problem since Covid, the rate increases will likewise take a while to break stuff. Seeing how 2 giant banks already collapsed in the initial wave, it may indicate worse things are coming. I hope the fed realizes this and stop pumping the brakes.
The problem is that the Fed is trying to fight inflation while also trying to keep the banks from having to recognize the losses in their HTM portfolios. In a <i>sane</i> world, Congress would raise taxes and cut federal spending to suck money out of the economy to fight inflation, thereby easing the need for the Fed to keep raising interest rates. Unfortunately, we don't live in a sane world.<p>All you need is a triggering event now to cause a run on the banks, and we're going to get to relive the Savings & Loan crisis all over again.<p>After this is all said and done, the Fed needs to really have its hands tied. No more ZIRP for a decade.
Why is this at all surprising? Banks buy fixed-interest-rate debt/bonds with deposits. Then the fed raises rates by a huge amount quickly, resulting in FMV of that debt dropping significantly, so lots of banks are insolvent if you were to mark-to-market their loans / treasuries.
I'm no economist, but here's my (probably crazy) idea to fix this.<p>A lot of the problem is supposedly that, seeking higher earnings, banks bought long-term bonds with slightly higher annual yields. Then as interest rates went up, the value of these existing long-term bonds dropped (because who wants to buy an old bond with a low interest rate when a brand new bond has a higher one?).<p>This is OK as long as nobody withdraws their money. The bank could simply proceed with the original plan: pay its depositors the same rate it has been, wait for bonds to mature and sell them for their full face value. It's only when people pull money out that they have to sell bonds before their maturity.<p>So, the government could (here's the crazy part) just let banks and everyone else redeem bonds early. You've got a 3 years left on bond for $10K paying out 1% interest, and you can't wait the 3 years to get your $10K? Fine, we will let you cash out before the 3 years is up.<p>Yes, it would cost the government a huge pile of money to do this, but the government borrowed that money at (what are now) insanely low rates, and it locked in those low rates. They're getting a super sweet deal on those bonds. Giving that up is not an outrageous ask.<p>Basically, this would kind of act like an infusion of money for the banks, but only in the sense that the rate they borrow at is more in line with the rate they lend at, i.e. a more typical, natural state of affairs.<p>This would probably need to be done gradually, like tell everybody you can cash in your bonds 3 months early if you want. If that's not enough, change it to 6 months, and so on.
So in 2008, home owners were underwater (houses worth less than the mortgage balance), which meant the bank's mortgage holding were worth less due to an unrealized higher risk of default. Today, the banks loans are underwater due to the low interest rates on the terms of those loans. Fed to the rescue again? All they have to do is lower interest rates to make the bank loans worth more, or they can buy or promise to buy the bank loans at face value if needed. Does that sound right?
Written by this guy <a href="https://www.facebook.com/leaveeuofficial/photos/a.805855112846065/3309506795814205/?paipv=0&eav=AfZgGH9rl-YLZhwd0SJiuFQyRlIDUd3YlZxqQXj7Nut8A80hyj-hPLyNjNNhVbxUhmA&_rdr" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/leaveeuofficial/photos/a.8058551128...</a>
Funny this came out right before the rates are to be raised tomorrow.<p>These bank CEOs had to know Interest Rates were going to raise, I knew it would happen eventually. So they should have started slowly selling their low rate assets years ago. Instead the got hooked on Free Money from the Fed.<p>Wall Street has been selling low performing assets for a while. I heard stocks are priced to the presumed Interest Rate Markets. So to the banks: stupid is as stupid does.
10 Bad situation happens.<p>20 Regulation is setup to mitigate/eliminate the bad situation.<p>30 Regulation to prevent the bad situation is removed.<p>40 GOTO 10<p>Seriously, all of this was predictable.<p>See Glass-Steagall Act loosening in 1999, followed by the GFC of 2008.<p>See removal of stress tests for all banks except six, in 2018, followed by 2023 bank collapses.
>The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff-edge over the next six quarters.<p>The Republicans initiated this with the ridiculous "Stimulus Checks". Trump actually had a good piece of advice: Cut the payroll tax instead... but you know, Orange man bad, rawr. Stimulus Checks ended up pretty much doing nothing and the incredible inefficiency/overhead in which they operate pretty much had the inevitable outcome: stupid amounts of inflation.<p>And it could have stopped there, but once the Democrats rose to power, and despite the pandemic largely being over AND the economy escaping just fine, they wanted to make sure their names got on a few stimulus checks too; being infuriated by Trump's ego and having his name on all over the checks.<p>Furthermore, a Democrat controlled house and senate being granted absolute blanks checks spending money on absolutely stupid stuff, but buying out/repaying important donors (For instance, Comcast, who can now collect $50/month per subscriber on reservations) and an inflation "reduction" act that was a self-titled joke.<p>While I think this article is alarmist, we do continue to drive ourselves off a cliff. The latest piece of stupidity echos 2008 where "credit scores are unfair" (categorically impossible, but ok) and good borrowers are now being forced to subsidize poor behavior... all of this being done in the most sketchy of channels via PMI.<p>Honestly, it's too risky for either party to be completely to have a majority. They're both self-serving muppets trying to extract as much value from the taxpayer while stabbing them in the back. Their only loyalty is to their net worth while the rest of us are _literally_ forced to support it or face jail time.
Fiat bros gonna cry about how valuable police state ponzi tokens are because they're backed by the best death threats by the biggest nuclear weapons.