Higher interest rates have brought America’s bankers both ruin and riches. Less than a year ago rising rates caused Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and then First Republic to fail, the largest bank collapses since 2008. Yet on January 12th JPMorgan Chase reported its seventh consecutive quarter of record net-interest income. One reason the crisis did not spread in 2023 is that the Federal Reserve contained it with a new—and generous—loan programme. Unfortunately, that has come at a cost that the Fed should have foreseen. Thanks to another turn in the interest-rate outlook, its intervention has mutated into a free-money machine for any bank brazen enough to exploit it.
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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Bagehot weeps”
From the January 20th 2024 edition
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