US Banks Have $620 Billion of Unrealized Losses on Their Books

[Gunnar Larson]

US Banks Have $620 Billion of Unrealized Losses on Their Books
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-svb-exposed-risks-banks/?ai=eyJpc1N1YnNjcmliZWQiOmZhbHNlLCJhcnRpY2xlUmVhZCI6ZmFsc2UsImFydGljbGVDb3VudCI6MCwid2FsbEhlaWdodCI6MX0=


The investment losses that helped take down Silicon Valley Bank are a
problem, to one degree or another, across the US financial system. In
total, the industry ended last year with $620 billion of unrealized losses
on its books from investments in low-yielding bonds.

For most banks, the issue is manageable.

Bonds held in investment books represented less than a quarter of the
banking system’s $23.6 trillion of assets in December, and unlike SVB,
lenders usually have a wide array of depositors who are unlikely to all
need money around the same time. For the biggest banks, the risks are even
smaller. They are perceived as too big to fail. What’s more, the recent
rally in the Treasury bond market — sparked, ironically, by the jitters
about the health of the banking industry — is helping to shrink the $620
billion of paper losses. (In the coming weeks, banks will start to post
first-quarter data.)

Banks’ Equity Could Take Hit If Paper Losses Had to Be Realized
For most banks, unrealized losses are a manageable problem. But investors
and depositors remain jittery about lenders sitting on huge piles of
money-losing bonds
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 1819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20230331/1889e9eb/attachment.txt>