US Bank Counterparty Risk Soars After Energy MTM Debacle
Coincidence? We don’t think so. In the week since The Fed gave the nod to banks to hide losses on energy loans, credit risk has spiked and stocks tumbled…
It is clear banks are hedging against one another’s systemic risk.
Simply put, it’s 2008 all-over-again as “when in doubt, sell ’em all” is back for the US financial system. When you know/question one bank (or some banks) is not transparent in their loan losses (and implicitly their capital ratios) then contagion (and collateral chains) tells any good fiduciary to sell them all – and the banks themselves will enable a vicious circle as they hedge.
And of course, the unintended consequence of The Fed’s decision to enable cheating in the banks’ energy loans is a surge in financial system instability as banks and the price of oil now become systemically more coupled.
