数以千计的美国银行可能“资不抵债”

数以千计的美国银行可能“资不抵债”

华尔街日报 ｜2023-05-07  

随着利率快速上升，当前美国银行的资产市值较其面值低约2万亿美元。且市场恐慌仍在蔓延，一次比2008年更大规模的信贷危机可能即将到来，在美国4800家银行中，近一半都面临“资不抵债”的困境。

斯坦福大学商学院金融学教授疾呼，数以千计的美国银行可能“资不抵债”，全美4800家银行的一半正处危险中，危机正山呼海啸般涌来。

Amit Seru教授在最近给纽约时报撰写的题为《是的，你应该担心潜在的银行危机，原因如下》的专栏文章中指出，几家知名银行在近期体现出的脆弱性和接连倒闭并非孤立事件。

随着利率快速上升、人们的工作模式发生了重大变化以及经济衰退迫在眉睫的三重‘组合拳’，将会出现自2008年金融危机以来从发生过的信贷紧缩局面。

Seru认为，市场脆弱的信心让美国银行业危机愈演愈烈，而高企的利率又进一步增加了银行的违约风险，危机并不是个案：这很恐怖，数以千计的银行都将“资不抵债”。我们不能认为危机仅与硅谷银行和第一共和银行有关。

恐慌蔓延 信心难以重振

Seru认为现在说美国银行业危机已经平息为时过早，市场恐慌仍在蔓延，一次比2008年更大规模的信贷危机可能即将到来：在过去几个月中，硅谷银行、签字银行和第一共和银行都破产了，它们的资产总额已经超过了金融危机期间25家破产银行的资产总额。

从5月1日摩根大通宣布收购第一共和银行的所有存款以及“几乎所有”资产后，银行股本周遭遇了大规模抛售。5月4日周四，西太平洋合众银行和阿莱恩斯西部银行股价的大幅下挫均在告诉市场，信心危机还在银行业中蔓延，动荡仍在继续。

现在恶劣的宏观经济环境的已经严重削弱了许多银行抵御另一次信贷危机的能力，而且很明显，一次大规模的信贷危机可能即将悄然降临。

华尔街见闻此前提及，因信心匮乏，美国银行业正面临一场负面的反馈循环：出现在负面新闻中，导致股价下跌，引发更多媒体新闻和讨论，这反过来引发储户挤兑。

以第一共和银行为例，4月24日周一，第一共和银行表示存款总额为1027亿美元，同比仅下降了3.7%；但到4月28日，其存款已降至926亿美元。短短一周时间，该行就流失了100亿美元的存款，约占其存款总额的10%。

巴菲特在今年的伯克希尔-哈撒韦股东年会上也直言，“恐慌”是困扰银行业的一个由来已久的问题，“恐慌是传染的，一直都是。”但他同时指出，过去，如果你看到人们在银行排队，正常的反应是加入队伍排。而今年，尽管监管机构FDIC能让每个储户拿到所有存款，公众还是担心。

Seru指出，将银行推入了风暴中的是美联储连续10次加息，目前，当前美国银行的资产市值已较其面值低2万亿美元。注重长期资产投资的中小型银行更容易陷入“资不抵债”的困境：在银行业有一个基本原则：投资期限越长，就越容易受到利率变化的影响。当利率上涨时，银行所持有的用于产生投资回报的资产价值会下降。

因此，利率上涨可能会消耗银行的资本，会让银行资不抵债。当审视全美约4800家银行时，我发现中小型银行股本价值的下降最为明显，这反映了它们更加重视长期资产的投注。

在接受卫报采访时，Seru更准确地指出了这一令人担忧的数字——在美国4800家银行中，近一半都“岌岌可危”。

商业地产的风暴即将来临

值得注意的是，Seru也对美国商业地产市场的风暴发出了警告，更高的利率将大幅增加美国银行违约的风险：由于紧缩的货币政策传导到实体经济的滞后性，我认为在未来几个季度，美国各大银行将面临迄今为止最严峻的挑战，违约风险大幅攀升。例如，在大萧条时期，随着利率上升，违约率从1%上升到9%左右。

美国商业房地产贷款（CRE）总计价值约为2.7万亿美元，占到平均银行资产的约四分之一。其中大量贷款将在未来几年到期，如果需要以更高的利率来进行再融资，就会增加贷款违约的风险。

华尔街见闻多次在此前文章中提到，美国商业地产可能是继银行业危机后下一个要暴雷的行业：今年还有约4000亿美元商业地产（CRE）的债务到期，未来两年到期的近万亿美元债务，小银行跟随大银行收紧贷款敞口的可能性，都加剧了商业地产的压力。而写字楼的空置率进一步攀升，加剧了市场对美国商业地产暴雷的担忧。

出于税务的原因，伯克希尔在商业地产领域一直不是很活跃。这次股东会上，芒格在谈到不良资产贷款时称，“在美国和全球其他地方的市中心，空心化将非常严重，会让人很不安。”

华尔街见闻本周稍早提到，芒格最近警告，美国商业地产市场正在酝酿一场风暴，随着地产价格下跌，美国银行业“充斥着不良贷款”。芒格认为，伯克希尔的克制部分源于，银行大量商业地产贷款可能带来的风险。他说：“很多房地产的情况已经不太妙了。我们有很多陷入困境的办公楼，很多陷入困境的购物中心，还有很多陷入困境的其他房地产。外面哀鸿遍野。”

上月巴菲特在媒体访谈中表示，美国银行的倒闭潮并未结束，未来可能会有更多银行倒闭，但在银行存款的储户不会蒙受损失。

Yes, You Should Be Worried About a Potential Bank Crisis. Here's Why.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-first-republic-financial-crisis.html

By Amit Seru  May 4, 2023

Mr. Seru is a professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

This article has been updated to include new information about PacWest and Western Alliance.

Our nation’s banking system is at a critical juncture. The recent fragility and collapse of several high-profile banks are most likely not an isolated phenomenon. In the near term, a damaging combination of fast-rising interest rates, major changes in work patterns and the potential of a recession could prompt a credit crunch not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

Back then, amid a housing market bubble, lenders had handed out high-risk loans to people with poor credit histories or insufficient income to afford homes. When the market collapsed, so did many of the banks that made these loans, causing the Great Recession. The epicenter this time is different, but the result may be the same: recession, lost jobs and widespread financial pain.

Just in the past few months, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank have failed. Their combined assets surpassed those held by the 25 banks (when adjusted for inflation) that collapsed at the height of the financial crisis. While some experts and policymakers believe that the resolution of First Republic Bank on Monday indicates the turbulence in the industry is coming to an end, I believe this may be premature. On Thursday, shares of PacWest and Western Alliance are falling as investors’ fears spread. Adverse conditions have significantly weakened the ability of many banks to withstand another credit shock — and it’s clear that a big one may already be on its way.

Rapidly rising interest rates create perilous conditions for banks because of a basic principle: The longer the duration of an investment, the more sensitive it is to changes in interest rates. When interest rates rise, the assets that banks hold to generate a return on their investment fall in value. And because the banks’ liabilities — like its deposits, which customers can withdraw at any time — usually are shorter in duration, they fall by less. Thus, increases in interest rates can deplete a bank’s equity and risk leaving it with more liabilities than assets. So it’s no surprise that the U.S. banking system’s market value of assets is around $2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value. When the entire set of approximately 4,800 banks in the United States is examined, the decline in the value of equity is most prominent for midsize and smaller banks, reflecting their heavier bets on long-term assets.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic also vividly demonstrates the vulnerability of banks to bank runs. Uninsured depositors, or those who have over $250,000 in a bank, can get nervous at the first sign of trouble and set off a sudden tsunami of withdrawals.

And there’s another looming area of concern that could spark such panic: the commercial real estate sector.

Commercial real estate loans, worth $2.7 trillion in the United States, make up around a quarter of an average bank’s assets. Many of these loans are coming due in the next few years, and refinancing them at higher rates naturally increases the risk of default. Rising interest rates also depress the value of commercial properties, especially those with long-term leases and limited rent escalation clauses, which also increases the likelihood of owner default. In the Great Recession, for example, default rates rose to about 9 percent, up from around 1 percent, as interest rates rose.

This time, the damage to the sector threatens to be far greater. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a huge jump in remote working, with over 40 percent of the U.S. labor force working remotely by May 2020. The return to in-person office work has been slow, with only about half of workers in the nation’s 10 largest cities working in the office as of last month, compared with prepandemic levels. The resulting decline in demand for commercial properties, particularly in the office sector, has been exacerbated by recent tech layoffs and the possibility of a recession.

Signs of distress are already visible, particularly in offices. By the end of March, the equity value of real estate holding companies, or REITs, focused on the office sector had declined by nearly 55 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, according to calculations by me and my co-authors of a recent study. This decline translates to a 33 percent reduction in the value of office buildings held by these companies. While the overall delinquency rate on commercial mortgages was relatively low as of March, at 2.61 percent, it has been rising fast.

To assess the banks’ ability to withstand the distress that could be caused by the commercial real estate sector, we can look at a range of scenarios. An increase in the default rate on commercial real estate to between 10 and 20 percent, at the lower end of the range seen during the Great Recession, would result in about $80 billion to $160 billion of additional bank losses. Such losses could have significant implications, especially for hundreds of smaller and midsize regional banks that have already been weakened by higher interest rates and that may have higher exposure to these kinds of loans.

The 2008 financial crisis spread from the housing sector to the rest of the economy as large banks with exposure in housing undertook tremendous losses. Currently, only a few banks with substantial exposure to commercial real estate loans are anticipating significant stress from the housing sector. If there are spillovers to the rest of the economy, other banks might be impacted, too. And yet the banking industry is insufficiently prepared for another perilous moment. To brace for these potential challenges, regulators and managers should consider bolstering banks’ equity capital in the ‌coming months.

Once we get past the commercial real estate crisis, there is a longer-term risk as well. After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the government took substantial actions, including guaranteeing all deposits regardless of size, to restore trust in the banking system. These steps, however needed in the moment, create a moral hazard, evoking the question: What incentive do bank executives have to not take bigger risks with depositors' money if they believe the government will protect their customers from any downside? Memories are short, and over time, government support could incentivize reckless behavior that harks back to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and '90s.

While the government’s efforts have stabilized the situation somewhat for now by seizing and selling First Republic, it is far too early to declare victory. Midsize and small banks play a vital role in lending to local businesses, and their insolvency could lead to a severe credit crunch with adverse effects on the real economy, particularly in regions with lower household incomes. At the same time, the risks of moral hazard lurk in the shadows. Real danger is looming, and we need to be ready for it.