There are two main avenues to a potential US financial crisis. Such a crisis, because of US financial dominance and because of the interconnections of globalism, which was a huge mistake for humanity, would be international. One avenue to crisis is the Federal Reserve’s current policy of raising interest rates. This policy follows many years of nearly zero interest rates in nominal terms, and negative interest rates in real terms. During these many years the financial assets banks accumulated on their balance sheets, such as bonds, pay a low rate of interest. When the central bank (Federal Reserve) raises interest rates, the values of the lower interest rate financial instruments fall, thus shrinking the asset side of banks’ balance sheets but not the liabilities side. Thus the central bank’s policy is pushing banks toward insolvency. When depositors realize that their deposits could be frozen for some time or lost if over $250,000 in size, as many corporation payrolls and some individual accounts are, they withdraw their deposits. The banks cannot meet the withdrawals because their assets have shrunk in value relative to deposits and because as they sell the depreciated assets to meet the withdrawals the prices of the troubled assets fall further. Silicon Valley Bank had assets heavily weighted with low interest rate US Treasury bonds, the value of which was driven down by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. The other two banks were victims of crypto-currency which is too volatile for a bank’s balance sheet.
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