外刊精读 | 硅谷银行到底因何爆雷？

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Narrator:Silicon Valley Bank was the home of tech startups, the 16th largest lender in America, and held around $200 billion in assets. It collapsed on March 10th – the biggest lender to do so since the global financial crisis. Many of its deposits were larger than the $250,000 that is covered by federal insurance. Regulators stepped in to mitigate the damage.

Joe Biden:Every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them.

Narrator:But it has exposed some serious flaws in America’s banking architecture. Our Wall Street correspondent explains what happened and what might happen next.

Alice Fulwood:Silicon Valley Bank mostly caters to the tech industry. And over the past three years, the tech industry has been booming. They’ve raised a lot of money for venture capital and they were all banking with Silicon Valley Bank. Now, all of these customers are commercial customers, and because they place large deposits with Silicon Valley Bank, that means they aren’t covered by deposit insurance – a program that protects depositors from losses in the event that their bank fails. So that was one problem.

The other problem for Silicon Valley is that it has amassed a huge pot of deposits from these tech companies over the past three years, but it was struggling to make loans to those same companies. So instead, it used those deposits and it bought a lot of treasury securities, which is debt issued by the American government, and mortgage-backed securities as well. And those assets were very, very sensitive to rising interest rates. So as interest rates went up, the value of all the assets that Silicon Valley Bank had bought fell sharply.

So when people realized that the value of its assets had fallen and that it might be insolvent, all of its customers had a real incentive to run, to pull their assets from the bank as quickly as they can. And that is exactly what happened.

The Treasury announced that all depositors in Silicon Valley Bank and another bank called Signature, which also failed, were going to be made whole. So even the uninsured deposits that companies had placed with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were going to be redeemable in full. That is a new intervention that the Treasury has not made before in one of these bank failures.

And at the same time, the Federal Reserve launched a new lending facility which would allow banks to post good, high-quality assets like treasuries, like mortgage-backed securities in a new facility to borrow against them at quite generous rates. And the combination of those two things was supposed to try and stop contagion from spreading across the banking system.

This episode raises two big questions about the financial system. The first is whether the regulatory apparatus that banks currently exist under is appropriate. Silicon Valley Bank and other banks of its size were exempted from a lot of the regulations put in place post-crisis, in part because it was thought that their failure wouldn’t pose a systemic risk to the financial system. But as we’ve seen, when there was a run on a bank as big as Silicon Valley Bank, that quickly led to fears of runs at other institutions. That suggests that there were systemic risks associated with a bank of that size failing. And maybe those thresholds need to be rethought.

The second big question is about whether we’ll see problems elsewhere in the financial system. You’ve seen financial institutions in the hottest parts of the economy, so crypto with the failure of FTX, and now tech with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, you’ve seen those institutions come unstuck first as interest rates have climbed.

It’s not yet clear whether the full impact of interest rates has rippled through the entire financial system and revealed all the institutions that might be struggling with the consequences.

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单词

1. Deposits - (存款) Money placed in a bank account.

2. Federal insurance - (联邦保险) A program that protects depositors from losses in the event that their bank fails.

3. Commercial customers - (商业客户) Customers who are businesses rather than individuals.

4. Venture capital - (风险投资) Investment in a startup or a small business with the potential for significant growth.

5. Treasury securities - (国库证券) Debt issued by the American government.

6. Mortgage-backed securities - (抵押支持证券) Securities backed by a pool of mortgages.

7. Insolvent - (破产) Unable to pay debts as they fall due.

8. Contagion - (蔓延) The spread of financial distress from one institution to others.

9. Lending facility - (贷款设施) A mechanism for banks to borrow money from the central bank.

10. Systemic risk - (系统性风险) The risk that the failure of one institution could cause a domino effect on the financial system.

11. Regulatory apparatus - (监管机制) The set of rules and regulations that govern the banking system.

12. Exempted - (豁免) Excluded from a rule or regulation.

13. Thresholds - (门槛) The level at which something starts to have an impact.

14. Crypto - (加密货币) Digital currency that uses cryptography for security.

15. Rippled through - (波及) To have an effect on something and cause a series of consequences.

构词法介绍：

1. Federal insurance：由名词federal（联邦的）和insurance（保险）构成，federal为形容词表示联邦的，联邦的保险即指由联邦政府提供的保险制度。

2. Venture capital：由名词venture（风险）和capital（资本）构成，指投入于风险投资的资本。

3. Mortgage-backed securities：由名词mortgage（抵押）和backed securities（支持证券）构成，指由抵押贷款构成的证券。

4. Systemic risk：由形容词systemic（系统的）和risk（风险）构成，指系统性风险。

5. Regulatory apparatus：由名词regulatory（监管的）和apparatus（机制）构成，指监管机制。

回答问题

Reading Questions：

1. What was the main problem with Silicon Valley Bank's deposits that made it vulnerable to failure?

   A. They were invested in risky ventures.

   B. They were not covered by deposit insurance.

   C. They were too small to sustain the bank.

   D. They were invested in securities that were sensitive to interest rates.

2. What did Silicon Valley Bank do with the deposits it received from tech companies?

   A. It used them to invest in new ventures.

   B. It used them to make loans to those same companies.

   C. It bought treasury and mortgage-backed securities.

   D. It kept the deposits in reserve.

3. What are the two big questions raised by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank?

   A. Whether the regulatory apparatus for banks is appropriate and whether there will be problems elsewhere in the financial system. B. Whether Silicon Valley Bank invested in risky ventures and whether it properly managed its deposits.

   C. Whether the government should intervene more in bank failures and whether the failure of Silicon Valley Bank was an isolated incident.

   D. Whether banks should be more heavily regulated and whether the failure of Silicon Valley Bank could have been prevented.

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答案

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