The shocks hitting in the US banking sector presage a new economic depression, says an economist and academic.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March proved to be more than an isolated incident. First Republic Bank was taken into administration by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in early May and will now be taken over by JPMorgan Chase, one of the 'Big Four' US finance houses.
Mark Frost told Sputnik that the banking crisis was only deepening. "There's more banks on the FDIC list of troubled banks today than there was when I was on the show last. So it just drives home the point that... the potential of bank runs is becoming more robust, not less robust."
The economist said the root cause of the crisis was simply the ancient sin of greed.
"What's causing the bank failures is banks that are greedy and they have depositors who are greedy," Frost said. "SVB, to me, they were a great class study in a bank because the bank was greedy, the depositors were greedy, the shareholders were greedy."
He economist said everyone involved in the failed bank was looking for far higher returns than its portfolio of over-valued treasury bonds could yield — but were counting on the government to bail them out if it all went wrong.
"The depositors believed that they would come out smelling like a rose should anything happen. They were too big to fail, is the common vernacular. And of course we know that's true. And then in the recent bank problems, they've just been real quick to roll them into a big bank."
"Not only is inflation coming, but stagflation is coming," Frost warned. "Not only are we going to be experiencing inflation, but we're going to be experiencing a depression."
"It's going to hit the poor people especially hard," he stressed. "And that means disposable income goes down. And then when when disposable income goes down, people save less. And when people save less, that puts pressure on loanable funds markets."
Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve is "between a rock and a hard place" as it simultaneously tries to combat inflation and bail out ailing banks.
"They're providing liquidity to all the banks in the system so that there's plenty of cash should there be a run on any bank," Frost explained. "The money supply has been drastically increased. At the very same time they're trying to fight inflation. These two goals are diametrically opposed. They cannot achieve both of them at the same time."
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