Banks Are Making Easy Money Off Crisis Government Program Designed to Bail Them Out

Federal Reserve

Banks are leveraging current interest rate projections to make a profit off of a program created last year designed to give access to funds for the sector amid a banking crisis, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Federal Reserve created the bank term funding program in the midst of a banking crisis started by a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March due to fears that SVB’s collapse would spread to the rest of the industry, according to the WSJ. Struggling banks can take depreciated bonds at face value and exchange those with the Fed for one-year loans in an effort to bolster liquidity, but since the loans are tied to future interest rate expectations and interest rates are increasingly expected to drop in the near future, banks can turn a profit on the difference.

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JPMorgan Boss Warns That Banking Crisis Will Have Consequences ‘For Years to Come’

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the current fallout from the bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank would likely continue for years.

“As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come,” wrote Dimon. However, in comparison to 2008, Dimon said the 2023 crisis “involves far fewer financial players and fewer issues that need to be resolved.”

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