The banking crisis in the United States is worsening as research suggests that American banks could be in much more trouble than previously thought.
According to the UK’s Telegraph, nearly half of America’s 4,800 banks are “burning through their capital buffers.”
Furthermore, stocks in American banks are plunging this week following the seizure of the First Republic Bank by federal regulators on May 1. JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the US, will take on the bank’s deposits and most of its assets.
The crisis comes as crashes in the US commercial real estate and bond market have “collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in the American banking system,” the report noted.
Professor Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University, estimates that more than 2,315 banks are currently sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities.
“The US banking system’s market value of assets is $2.2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value of assets accounting for loan portfolios held to maturity,” he said.
The Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening has yet to fully impact the economy, and a huge wall of debt has accumulated, with some estimates putting the total figure of US debt at $31.7 trillion.
Bitcoin, which was spawned out of the 2008 global financial crisis, could ironically be the financial parachute in the next imminent banking disaster.
