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Tdubs's avatar

The problem for these smaller banks isn't just that interest rates went up. It's that they had a flood of deposits when interest rates were extremely low, mainly due to the various stimulus programs. The smaller banks couldn't grow their loan portfolio at a comparable rate to the increase in deposits so they had to buy more bonds. Then with swollen bond portfolios, rates went up causing large unrealized losses and at the same time, deposits were shrinking as the excess cash was disappearing. SVB is an extreme version of this story but I've been hearing about community banks feeling this funding stress since last fall.

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John Quiggin's avatar

I can't see how the FDIC can make a credible commitment not to bail out depositors in future (they didn't bail out Indymac, but that brief period of bravery ended with the GFC). So, it would be better to make the guarantee explicit, and regulate accordingly (roughly, turn them into public utilities).

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