Banking on Disaster: Fed Continues to Tighten

The Federal Reserve's extreme tightening just caused the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history (in nominal dollars).

In this post, I will explain just how far the contagion is likely to spread, and why this is likely just the start of what may be widespread liquidity crises.

In early 2022, in order to mitigate the record inflation it caused, the Fed began hiking interest rates. By mid-2022, the Fed was raising interest rates at the fastest pace on record. The rate of change (or ROC) in Treasury yields began to rise parabolically. Below is a chart that I posted back in August 2022 to show how extreme the rate of change was for the 2-year U.S. Treasury bond yield.


Since bond prices move inversely to yields, bond prices began to fall sharply in 2022 as yields were rising. In October 2022, I posted the below ratio chart of TLT and M2SL to illustrate the immense wealth destruction that holding Treasury bonds was having for investors and institutions. I warned that what was occurring is destabilizing.


To understand how I used the ratio chart of TLT and M2SL to conclude that, due to the Fed's extreme tightening, destabilizing wealth destruction was occurring for bondholders, you can see my post below.


By late 2022, it became a mathematical certainty that liquidity crises would occur. Many market participants who were holding extremely low-yielding bonds were experiencing extreme losses because of the Fed's extreme rate hikes. Such losses are unrealized unless the bondholders are forced to liquidate while yields are much higher than when the bonds were purchased. For those who recall what happened in October 2022, pension funds in the UK were forced to liquidate their highly leveraged bond positions at a loss due to margin calls. This caused the Bank of England to quickly pivot in order to avert a major liquidity crisis for pension funds.

Silicon Valley Bank ( SIVB ) however was not as lucky as UK pension funds. SIVB was at the forefront of the central bank-engineered liquidity crisis because of its unique clientele: debt-dependent start-ups. As liquidity was being destroyed by the Fed at a record pace in 2022, start-ups, which are heavily reliant on debt and cheap money to continue operations and generate growth, began to draw down their deposits as cash evaporated and borrowing became more expensive. This in turn forced SIVB to liquidate its bond holdings at a major loss, similar to the UK pension funds in October 2022. Once Silicon Valley Bank reported this major loss to the public, the market suddenly began to fear its viability. Within days, the bank collapsed.

The collapse of SIVB occurred with an estimated 85% to 96% of all deposit amounts not being FDIC-insured. This means that most of the $175 billion in deposits at the time of the collapse may be partially or totally unrecoverable. Two things about the bank's collapse are remarkable: First, the unprecedented speed by which the bank collapsed and was seized by the FDIC, and, second, the overwhelming majority of the money deposited in the bank was not FDIC-insured. This is quite concerning because such a lack of FDIC insurance on deposits undermines the public's faith in the FDIC to maintain banking stability. Such a lack of insurance also causes actual liquidity contagion.

Circle, the company that manages the USDC stablecoin, has confirmed that $3.3 billion of its U.S. dollar reserves were in the now-collapsed bank. At the time of writing, Circle does not know if or when the FDIC will come to the rescue.


It's possible that neither the FDIC nor the U.S. Treasury comes to Circle's rescue, as neither entities are eager to support the cryptocurrency industry, which undermines U.S. dollar hegemony. The FDIC, therefore, faces a major conundrum: Maintain the public's faith in FDIC-guaranteed banking and ensure there is no liquidity contagion, at the expense of acting as a protector of stablecoins and cryptocurrency, and more generally, increasing moral hazard.

Nonetheless, this fear that the FDIC may not come to the rescue has caused USDC to de-peg from the US dollar. Each USDC is now worth less than one US dollar, as shown in the chart below.


Upon seeing USDC rapidly de-pegging, the cryptocurrency exchange platform, Coinbase, decided to temporarily freeze USDC conversion into U.S. dollars, forcing a reprieve in USDC's de-pegging.


Nonetheless, at the time of writing, USDC is still teetering on the brink of collapse, having lost nearly 90% of the Tether ( USDT ) in its 3pool currency reserves.


USDC instability is now spilling over into other cryptocurrency spaces that rely on USDC maintaining a stable value. One such space is the AAVE protocol. AAVE is an Open Source Liquidity Protocol that operates on the premise that only "low-risk tokens" such as USDC be used as collateral and as a lending pool reserve.


Now that USDC has de-pegged from the U.S. dollar, any collateral that was pledged in USDC is now suddenly worth less. This is destabilizing the liquidity and reserve structure of the AAVE protocol. AAVE currently has $6 billion of locked liquidity across its networks.


Although it is possible that the FDIC can fully resolve the crisis caused by the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, it is likely that volatility may persist, especially when Coinbase resumes USDC swaps. In a worst-case scenario, USDC may follow the same trajectory as TerraUSD (UST) in May 2022. In this scenario, the shockwaves will be felt not only across the cryptocurrency space but also in the Treasury market. If too many stablecoin holders suddenly demand dollars, it could force a liquidation of Treasurys on reserve. Circle currently has over $32 billion worth of Treasurys in its reserves. Although this may not be significant enough to destabilize the multi-trillion dollar Treasury market, it can cause positive feedback and can increase fear in the market.

This series of events was predictable and expected. The root cause is the central bank's monetary policy. The Fed is destroying the money supply at the fastest rate on record. Since the Fed is still tightening, which has a long and variable lag effect, the liquidity crises we're seeing now are likely the tip of the iceberg.


The fact the Fed is still tightening so deep into the start of a financial crisis is unprecedented. When Lehman collapsed in September 2008, for example, the Fed had already pivoted over a year earlier (in August 2007).


Now, it seems that a financial crisis is already underway but the Fed remains unable to pivot due to record-high inflation. Eurodollar futures are still demanding that the Fed hike rates. The Fed is therefore trapped. It must choose between runaway inflation or widespread liquidity crises.


The yield curve is deeply inverted. This is a reliable indication that a recession is coming. The fact that it has been inverted for a while, and is deeply inverted, may be foreshadowing the extent and duration of the coming recession.


In my post below, I explained why I believe that the most likely outcome is severe stagflation. The Fed is in a Catch-22, and there's no way to avert some kind of a crisis. Indeed, the coming years will likely reveal to us what the consequences are for decades of limitless monetary easing.



Important Disclaimer
Nothing in this post should be considered financial advice. Trading and investing always involve risks and one should carefully review all such risks before making a trade or investment decision. Do not buy or sell any security based on anything in this post. Please consult with a financial advisor before making any financial decisions. This post is for educational purposes only.