https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-michael-barr-senate-testimony-martin-gruenberg-silicon-valley-bank-failure-f16d23d8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
One certainty in politics is that the Federal Reserve will never accept responsibility for any financial problem. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr played that self-exoneration game on Tuesday before the Senate as he blamed bankers and Congress for Silicon Valley Bank’s failure. This act is simply unbelievable.
No one disputes that bankers failed to hedge the risk posed by rising interest rates to asset prices and deposits. What Mr. Barr didn’t say is that the Fed’s historic monetary mistake created the incentives for the bank blunders. The Fed fueled the fantastic deposit growth at SVB and other banks with its prolonged quantitative easing and zero interest-rate policy that caused banks to pile into longer-term, higher-yielding assets.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg noted in his testimony Tuesday that SVB’s balance sheet more than tripled in size between the end of 2019 and 2022, “coinciding with rapid growth in the innovation economy and a significant increase in the valuation placed on public and private companies.” That’s a cagey way of saying the Fed inflated tech valuations.
Silicon Valley investors cashed out shares at elevated prices and poured their windfall into startups with SVB accounts. SVB had more deposits than it could safely lend, so it loaded up on long-dated Treasurys and Fannie Mae securities that offered relatively high yields and were deemed low or no risk by regulators. What could go wrong?
When near-zero interest rates persist for nearly 13 years with hardly a blip upward, some bankers will bet this will last forever as they hunt for yield. The Fed had also assured the world until very late in 2021 that it had no plans to change its policies because inflation was transitory.