Quote:
Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian
And how often does a stampede of frenzied withdrawals occur in a vacuum, absent panic about the angst creating an underlying cause popping up as a catalyst? The concern about the safety of deposits arose as the news broke of SVB's terrible capital ratio deterioration and failed attempt to raise equity. You keep talking about the symptom of the disease; not its underlying cause. That was the point I made earlier, which you obviously missed (or didn't understand).
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TC - I think the problem here is that VM doesn't think like an economist. To be fair, he's hardly the only eccie poster with this affliction. I'm sure you are familiar with that other poster who I've often referred to as a "simple-minded simpleton". He always jumps into arguments over whether A was caused
entirely by B or
entirely by C, when any thinking economist would acknowledge A was
partially caused by each, so the more relevant (if nuanced) question should be
how much causal effect should we attribute to each factor. That's why economists create models and plot regressions - to quantify and measure the relative strength of the multiple correlations involved.
In the case of the SVB bank failure, we're trying to keep the focus on not just the obvious immediate cause(s), but the
antecedent causes as well. I like to explain these things using "but for" analysis. Something like this:
But for the recklessly over-stimulative fiscal policy of the Biden administration, inflation would not have soared from 1.2% at the start of 2021 to 9.1% a year and a half later.
But for the spike in inflation, the Federal Reserve would not have been compelled to tighten monetary policy and drive up interest rates (at least not as steeply or abruptly as it has done over the past year).
But for the steep climb in interest rates (and management's misguided affinity for LT versus ST securities), the market value of SVB's HTM investment book would not have cratered.
But for the public focus on the magnitude of unrealized losses in SVB's investment book, depositors wouldn't have gotten nervous and lost confidence.
But for this depositor loss of confidence, there would have been no run on deposits at SVB.
But for the deposit run, there would have been no SVB bank failure.
I hope I've dumbed it down enough. Let's see if we get any intelligent responses.