“救市”这个词肯定会让任何记得2008年金融危机的人以最糟糕的方式怀旧。当时，政府用纳税人的钱来维持美国一些最大的金融机构的运转。
两家地区性银行最近倒闭了。由于这些银行的储户担心他们账户中的钱，美联储介入以补充储户可能损失的任何资金。
美国政府甚至银行都很难称之为与2008年发生的事情有关的救市，政府根本拒绝称之为救市，这有几个原因。
发生了什么事?
当...的时候硅谷银行(SVB)和签名银行这些银行的储户担心他们的钱。联邦存款保险公司为储户的存款提供至少25万美元的保险，这意味着如果你在其中一家银行的存款超过这个数额，你可能就要倒霉了。
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然而，财政部、美联储和FDIC宣布，他们将确保在SVB和Signature Bank拥有账户的所有储户第二天就可以提取他们的资金——不仅仅是FDIC担保的25万美元。
美联储还宣布了一些其他行动，比如以一年期贷款的形式向其他金融机构提供资金。这一切都是为了在SVB崩溃后给其他银行注入信心，并避免任何银行挤兑。
钱流向了客户，而不是机构。
B. Riley Wealth and Art's的首席市场策略师阿特霍根(Art Hogan)表示:“2008年，我们实际上是在救助企业。"被视为大到不能倒的银行。"
但现在，正如霍根所说，政府不会来拯救SVB或Signature Bank——注意到所有的钱都流向了储户，而不是银行。
“但是(政府)不会让储户受到伤害，”霍根说。“他们实际上是在拯救那些在过去一年左右的时间里做出了一些错误决定的银行储户。”
这意味着投资者、员工或其他从这些机构中赚钱的人运气不好，应该无法动用政府将用于挽救储户的任何资金。
“金融危机期间发生了什么:我们许多大银行的股东和债券持有人得到了政府的救助，”加拿大皇家银行资本市场董事总经理杰拉德·卡西迪说。30多年来，卡西迪一直为加拿大皇家银行提供美国银行业的投资研究。
“倒闭的两家受人尊敬的银行——硅谷和Signature——的股东和债券持有人被彻底扫地出门;因此，从这个角度来看，我认为这不是一个紧急援助。
SVB并没有完全陷入混乱。汇丰银行(HSBC)周一宣布了一项收购硅谷银行(Silicon Valley Bank)英国子公司的交易，这家银行有了一个新名字:SVB桥银行(new York Bridge Bank)。
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但是回到“救助”这个词，它没有传统的定义。一些人仍然认为政府上周采取的行动是救市。一些专家认为，现在和2008年的区别只是谁在接受救助:储户。
“救市”，布鲁金斯学会的高级经济研究员艾伦·克莱因在接受美国广播公司新闻的电话采访时喊道。“事情就是这样——简单明了。”
克莱恩在政府部门工作了十多年，包括他担任参议院银行首席经济学家的时间。在此期间，他参与了问题资产救助计划(TARP)——国会于2008年10月批准的7000亿美元政府救助计划。
克莱恩的观点是，超出最初25万美元担保的储户实质上是在接受纾困。他指出，每个账户中存款少于这个数目的人都已经得到了美联储的退款保证。
“如果你让20个美国人在一个房间里排队，根据平均值，第19个最富有的人将在他们的银行账户中有大约69，000美元，”克莱恩指出。"很少有美国人在一家银行的存款超过25万美元。"
根据银行自己的描述，SVB为风险投资家(VC)、初创企业和科技行业的领导者提供服务——其中许多人在财务上可以被视为“富裕”。
“风投应该说声谢谢，”NYT和美国消费者新闻与商业频道的安德鲁·罗斯·索尔金在Twitter上写道。
“这是一次救助，”他写道。“不像2008年。但这是对风险投资界+他们的投资组合公司(他们的投资)的救助。这是SVB的储户基数。”
如果政府介入为这些银行客户提供超过25万美元的担保，许多人会怀疑这笔钱从哪里来，为什么这不被视为救助。
美联储表示，不会动用纳税人的钱。
白宫、财政部和联邦存款保险公司一直直言不讳地谈论一个话题:SVB和Signature Bank的这些储户的钱不会来自纳税人。
“对于被接管的银行，联邦存款保险公司将使用存款保险基金的资金，以确保其所有储户都是完整的，”财政部一名高级官员周日表示。
存款保险基金(DIF)是由联邦存款保险公司(FDIC)运营的一个项目，主要通过银行支付的对投保银行的季度评估以及投资于政府债券的资金利息来提供资金。这就是那25万美元是如何得到保证的，但现在政府正在超越这一保证，以确保信心。
官员们周一表示，DIF目前有超过1000亿美元的资金，这应该足以让SVB和Signature Bank完整。
以一年期贷款形式提供给其他银行、储蓄协会、信用合作社和其他合格存款机构的资金——所有这些机构都必须拿出合格资产作为抵押品——将来自一个新的银行定期融资计划(BTFP)。
这更像是一种故障保险。BTFP旨在保护那些在SVB和签名银行倒闭后失去储户信心的银行。
“这一行动将增强银行系统保护存款的能力，并确保向经济持续提供货币和信贷，”美联储在一份声明中表示。"美联储准备应对任何可能出现的流动性压力."
如果需要，BTFP将从外汇稳定基金(ESF)获得高达250亿美元的部分资金。ESF是一种应急储备基金，通常用于外汇干预。
美联储表示，它“预计没有必要动用这些支持基金。”
目前还不清楚SVB和Signature Bank的倒闭对储户信心的打击有多大——本周早些时候，超过24家地区性银行的股票暴跌。
全国各地大小不同的银行，包括总部位于旧金山的第一共和国银行和总部位于盐湖城的Zions银行，发现自己处于市场动荡之中，一些客户急忙提取存款，投资者因担心这些银行出现挤兑而抛售银行股。
美国地区性银行的动荡今天蔓延到了欧洲。长期陷入困境的瑞士银行瑞士瑞信银行的股票今天暴跌了24%。而美国银行股又一天下跌。分析人士称，美联储的快速加息动摇了人们对整个行业的信心。
尽管如此，美联储表示，如果任何其他银行遭受与SVB和Signature Bank相同的命运，它准备让储户们得到补偿。
值得注意的是，大多数专家认为，这两家银行的倒闭是由管理不善和错误的财务决策造成的，应被视为特殊情况。
“这是一家管理不善的银行，同时遇到了几个不同的问题，”卡西迪在谈到SVB时说。“看起来每个人的钱都将被保险，甚至超过25万美元——所以我们的想法是不要恐慌，这将会稳定下来……我们会度过难关的。”
A bailout or not? Did the federal government bailout Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank?
The word “bailout” is sure to make anyone who remembers the 2008 financial crisis nostalgic in all the worst ways. At the time, the government used taxpayer money to keep some of the country’s largest financial institutions afloat.
Two regional banks recently collapsed. As depositors of those banks feared for the money in their accounts, the Fed stepped in to replenish any of the money depositors would have lost.
The U.S. government and even the banks struggle to call it a bailout in any way that relates to what happened in 2008, with the government refusing to call it a bailout at all, and there’s a couple of reasons for all of this.
What happened?
WhenSilicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bankwere seized and shut down by regulators last weekend, depositors of those banks feared for their money. The FDIC insures depositors' money up to at least $250,000 – meaning if you had more than that amount in one of those banks, you may be out of luck.
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However, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC announced they would make sure all depositors with accounts at SVB and Signature Bank would have access to their funds by the next day – beyond just the $250,000 guaranteed by the FDIC.
The Fed announced a few other actions as well – like making funds available for other financial institutions in the form of one-year loans. This is all to instill confidence in other banks after SVB’s collapse, and to avoid any run on the banks.
The money is going to customers, not the institutions.
“In 2008, we were actually bailing out companies,” said Art Hogan, a chief market strategist with B. Riley Wealth and Art's with over 30-years- experience working in the US equity markets. “Banks that were seen as too big to fail.”
But now, as Hogan puts it, the government is not coming to save SVB or Signature Bank - noting that all the money is going towards depositors, not the banks.
“But [the government] is not going to let the depositors get hurt,” says Hogan. “They’re actually rescuing depositors in banks that made some bad decisions over the course of the last year or so.”
That means investors, employees or others who were making money from these institutions are out of luck and should not be able to touch any of the money the government will be using to make depositors whole.
“What happened during the financial crisis: shareholders and bondholders of many of our biggest banks were bailed out by the government,” said Gerard Cassidy managing director with RBC Capital Markets. Cassidy has been with and provided RBC with investment research on the U.S. banking industry for more than 30 years.
“The shareholders and bondholders of the two respected banks that failed -- Silicon Valley and Signature, were completely wiped out; And so, from that standpoint, I would say this is not a bailout,” he said.
SVB is not in complete shambles. HSBC on Monday announced a deal to buy the U.K. subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank, which has a new name: SVB Bridge Bank.
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But back to the word “bailout” – which has no traditional definition. Some still consider the actions taken by the government over the last week a bailout. The difference, per some experts, between now and 2008 is simply who is being bailed out: the depositors.
“Bailout,” yelled senior economics fellow at Brookings Institution, Aaron Klein, during a phone interview with ABC News. “That’s what it is - plain and simple.”
Klein spent over a decade working in government, including his time as chief economist of the Senate Banking. During that time, he worked on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) – a $700 billion government bailout authorized by Congress in October of 2008.
Klein’s point is that the depositors being made whole beyond the original $250,000 guarantee are, in essence, getting bailed out. Everyone who had less than that in their accounts was already guaranteed their money back by the Fed, he noted.
“If you lined up 20 Americans in a room, the 19th richest person will have – based on the average – about $69,000 in their bank account,” noted Klein. “Very few Americans have more than $250,000 in a single bank.”
Per the bank’s own description, SVB catered its services to venture capitalists (VCs), start-up and leaders in the tech industry – many of whom could be considered financially “well-off”.
“VCs should say thank you,” wrote NYT’s and CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Twitter.
“It is a bailout,” he wrote. “Not like 2008. But it is a bailout of the venture capital community + their portfolio companies (their investments). That’s the depositor base of SVB.”
If the government is stepping in to guarantee these bank customers their money beyond the $250,000 guarantee, many are left wondering where that money is coming from and how this is not considered a bailout.
No taxpayer money will be used, says the Fed.
The White House, the Treasury and the FDIC have been blunt about one talking point: the money for these depositors at SVB and Signature Bank will not come from taxpayers.
“For the banks that were put into receivership, the FDIC will use funds from the Deposit Insurance Fund to ensure that all of its depositors are made whole,” said a senior Treasury Department official Sunday.
The Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) is a program run by the FDIC mainly funded through quarterly assessments on insured banks, paid by the banks – as well as interest on funds invested in government bonds. This is how that $250,000 gets guaranteed, but now the government is going beyond that guarantee to ensure confidence.
The DIF currently has over $100 billion in it, which should be a “sufficient” amount to make SVB and Signature Bank whole, officials said Monday.
The funds offered in the form of one-year-loans to other banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions – all of whom will have to put up qualifying assets as collateral – will come from a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).
This is more of a failsafe. The BTFP is aimed at safeguarding banks who may have lost depositors’ confidence after the SVB and Signature Bank collapse.
“This action will bolster the capacity of the banking system to safeguard deposits and ensure the ongoing provision of money and credit to the economy,” the Fed said in a statement. “The Federal Reserve is prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise.”
If needed, the BTFP will be partially funded by up to $25 billion from the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). The ESF is an emergency reserve fund normally used for foreign exchange intervention.
The Fed says it “does not anticipate that it will be necessary to draw on these backstop funds.”
It’s unclear how much harm the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank did to depositors' confidence - earlier this week, stocks of more than two dozen regional banks tumbled.
Banks varying in size from around the country, including San Francisco-based First Republic Bank and Salt Lake City-based Zions Bank, find themselves in market turmoil as some customers rushed to withdraw their deposits and investors dumped bank stocks fearing a run on those banks.
The turmoil in regional US banks spread to Europe today. The stock of Credit Suisse, a long troubled Swiss bank, plunged 24% today. While American banks stocks had another down day. Analysts say the rapid interest raise increases by the federal reserve are shaking confidence in the entire sector.
Nevertheless, the Fed says it’s prepared to make depositors whole should any other bank suffer the same fate as SVB and Signature Bank.
It’s worth noting that most experts agree that the collapse of these two banks was caused by poor management and misguided financial decisions, and should be considered exceptional circumstances.
“This was a poorly managed bank that ran into a couple of different issues at the very same time,” said Cassidy regarding SVB. “It looks like everyone’s money will be insured even beyond $250,000 – so the idea is not to panic, this will settle down…we'll get through this.”
