Because Trump’s EGRRCPA eliminated important elements of Dodd-Frank’s Title I, Silicon Valley Bank and other banks of that asset size, are not required to calculate and report the Liquidity Coverage Ratio, the Net Stable Funding Ratio, or to conduct comprehensive liquidity assessment reviews. Capital and liquidity are not the same thing. High quality capital is comprised of common equity and retained earnings; they help you absorb unexpected losses. Liquidity is having enough assets that you can deploy when you urgently need to meet liabilities under stressed conditions. Clearly when SVB had to meet fleeing deposits which are a significant part of a bank’s liability, it did not have liquid assets to cover them.
The purpose of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) is for banks to add up all of their high quality liquid assets such as cash, U.S. treasuries, AAA investment grade fixed income securities, and other cash equivalents. That figure is then divided by net stressed cash outflows; this is the part where banks have to calculate all the ‘what if’ scenarios. This part of the LCR requires banks to simulate what happens when big deposits or a significant number of deposits flee. The LCR also asks banks to calculate what happens to them when large receivables do not come in or how a bank is impacted when its biggest counterparties default. Dividing the numerator by the denominator tells you if a bank is sufficiently liquid in periods of stress. If the result is 100 or preferably much higher, banks should be able to meet their obligations at least for a month even in stressed obligations.
To say trump had no part in this is just partisan hackery, which is exactly what I expect of you.
Allowing banks to lend 10x their deposits with no reserves means more extremely low interest money in the economy, which leads to inflation, which leads to higher rates.
Every couple of years lenders and traders tell me that ‘this time, it will be different.’ Silicon Valley Bank-induced chaos shows that bank deregulation always ends in the same painful way.
www.forbes.com