Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse last Friday has exposed a big problem with “safe” securities bought with government guarantees during the pandemic.
Worries about European banking giant Credit Suisse, CS which has lost money for five quarters in a row, intensified on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported that that its top shareholder ruled out investing more in the bank. That pulled the European banking sectorstocks lower, and was weighing on U.S. banking shares.
The Fed’s focus, with the help of a new emergency bank funding program rolled out over the weekend, has been heading off any contagion at other U.S. banks heaped with paper losses from similar low-coupon pandemic-era securities. Its efforts intend to help steady markets, even if it isn’t a perfect cure.
‘These are not toxic’ After the Fed kept credit flowing and cheap for the most part of the past two decades, last year it began to raise interest rates aggressively to fight inflation that reached its highest level in 40-years. “They are not toxic,” said Kris Mitchener, and economics professor at Santa Clara University, and an expert on the history of financial crises.
“That’s the puzzle,” he said. “Because bank management should be concerned about interest-rate exposure and duration risks. That’s something I teach my undergraduates.”
ESG isn’t a safe investment
TLDR: because it wasn't safe