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F I N A N Ç A S • B A N C O D O VA L E D O S I L Í C I O

Os bancos dos EUA estão

sentados em $ 1,7 trilhão em
perdas não realizadas, diz a
pesquisa. Isso não é um
problema - até que seja
"Desde que as pessoas não cheguem todas ao
mesmo tempo e exija que seus depósitos sejam
devolvidos, tudo bem, mas é exatamente isso
que está acontecendo", disse o professor
Stephan Weiler à Fortune. "Portanto, as chances
de enfrentar essas perdas não realizadas estão
aumentando."
POR WILL DANIEL
23 de março de 2023 17:12 EDT

Os comerciantes trabalham no pregão da Bolsa de

Valores de Nova York durante as negociações
matinais em 13 de março de 2023 na cidade de Nova
York. Foto de Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Após o rápido colapso do Silicon Valley Bank e

do Signature Bank no início deste mês, junto
com a morte prematura do Credit Suisse na
semana passada, reguladores e líderes
empresariais fizeram questão de garantir
publicamente aos consumidores que os bancos
são seguros. O potencial de “ contágio ” em
todo o sistema financeiro agora é pequeno
depois que o Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
(FDIC), o Federal Reserve e o Tesouro se
uniram para apoiar todos os depositantes,
tanto sem seguro quanto com seguro, no SVB e
na Signature, dizem eles.

A secretária do Tesouro, Janet Yellen, por

exemplo, disse aos legisladores do Comitê de
Finanças do Senado na semana passada, após
a segunda e terceira maiores falências de
bancos da história, que os americanos “podem
se sentir confiantes” sobre a segurança de seus
depósitos. E a CEO do Citigroup, Jane Fraser,
disse ao Economic Club de Washington DC na
quarta-feira que o sistema bancário é “sólido”
e que os bancos grandes e regionais estão
“bem capitalizados”, acrescentando que “isso
não é uma crise de crédito”, informou a
Reuters .

VER MAIS

When Credit Suisse went under shortly after

Silicon Valley Bank, analysts argued that it
was a scandal-plagued institution that had
racked up billions in losses from high profile
issues—including the Archegos hedge fund
implosion of 2021—and its clients and
depositors merely lost confidence. And they
note that Silicon Valley Bank made fatal, and
easily avoidable, errors in risk management
that aren’t indicative of the health of the
overall financial system.

But SVB also suffered from heavy unrealized

losses caused by rising interest rates that
helped to trigger a bank run from its large
base of uninsured depositors. And a new paper
by researchers at New York University on
March 13 found that they aren’t the only ones
with these issues—U.S. banks had unrealized
losses of $1.7 trillion at the end of 2022. The
losses were nearly equal to banks’ total equity
of $2.1 trillion, professors Philip Schnabel and
Alexi Savov and the University of
Pennsylvania’s Itamar Drechsler explained.

Rising interest rates have slashed the value of

the U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed
securities that make up a large portion of
many banks’ assets. In another paper, also
from March 13, university researchers found
that U.S. banks’ assets have lost 10% of their
value over the past year alone.

Additionally, of the $17 trillion in total U.S.

bank deposits, nearly $7 trillion are currently
not insured by the FDIC, according to that
paper. The authors of the study—including
University of Southern California’s Erica
Xuewei Jiang, Northwestern University’s
Gregor Matvos, Columbia University’s Tomasz
Piskorski, and Stanford University’s Amit Seru
—explained that if half of these uninsured
depositors decide to withdraw their funds
after the recent bank instability, it could put
hundreds of billions of dollars of deposits in
jeopardy.

“If uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even

small fire sales [of assets], substantially more
banks are at risk,” they wrote. “Overall, these
calculations suggest that recent declines in
bank asset values very significantly increased
the fragility of the U.S. banking system.”

No fire without a spark

Unrealized losses aren’t reflected on banks’
balance sheets due to an accounting practice
where assets are held on banks’ books at the
value at which they are bought, instead of
their current market value. And Stephan
Weiler, an economics professor at Colorado
State University and co-director of the
Regional Economic Development Institute,
explained that these losses will only be
realized by banks if they are forced to sell their
holdings amid a bank run where depositors
withdraw their funds en masse. That’s what
happened with SVB, depositors asked for the
money back in droves, forcing the bank to sell
its holdings of mortgage-backed securities at a
$2.4 billion pre-tax loss.

“As long as people aren’t all coming in at the

same time and demanding that their deposits
back, you’re okay,” Weiler told Fortune
Thursday.

The problem, JPMorgan’s analysts led by

Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou noted this week, is
that $1 trillion in deposits were pulled from
the “most vulnerable” U.S. banks after SVB’s
collapse.

“So the chances of facing those unrealized

losses are going up,” Weiler warned, and that
could lead to more bank runs.

As a result of this potential problem for U.S.

banks, multiple politicians, including
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and
California Rep. Ro Khanna, have argued the
Fed should backstop every type of depositor at
all banks to prevent further bank runs from
the public. And those calls intensified this
week after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee
Wednesday that she is not considering
“blanket insurance” for all U.S. bank deposits,
unless “systemic risk” becomes an issue,
Reuters reported.

Even the billionaire hedge fund manager Bill

Ackman said this week that the FDIC “stop the
bleeding” and “explicitly guarantee all
deposits now.”

“We have gone from implicit support for

depositors to [Secretary Yellen’s] explicit
statement today that no guarantee is being
considered,” Ackman, who founded Pershing
Square Capital Management tweeted on
Wednesday, adding that he “would be
surprised if deposit outflows don’t accelerate,
effective immediately.”

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