State Street SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF

the Fed did something that I thought was very clever. They basically said, we're not going to cut just to bail out the equity market. But if the market's liquidity is no longer functioning, emphasis on liquidity, then we'll step in to restore liquidity.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🏦 Treasury routes around a recalcitrant Fed via community-bank deregulation E227 · 2025-05-09 ▶ 19:47

What I'm saying very directly is that the Fed is acting in a manner that is as much politically motivated as financially metric motivated, because the financial metrics, some of the most critical leading indicators, particularly around liquidity and the credit health of the American consumer, are blinking yellow. So right now, they are choosing to ignore these historically useful leading indicators. And the only reason that I can come up with to ignore it are political reasons.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Treasury routes around a recalcitrant Fed via community-bank deregulation E222 · 2025-04-05 ▶ 54:04

And if you remember the interview that Besant gave to us a couple weeks ago, he was very clear that one of his mandates is to enable the re-leveraging of the financial system. Meaning he wants to give banks the ability to issue more debt, to introduce more capital and more liquidity into the markets by taking away some of the regulatory restrictions that have made it more difficult for the banks to issue credit to business owners and to individuals. So if they are successful in their deregulatory efforts, it will introduce more liquidity into the market

Jason oppose ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Treasury routes around a recalcitrant Fed via community-bank deregulation E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 1:10:13

So in an extremely difficult, confusing storm, what is the best thing to do when you're driving the storm is just maybe try to keep the car going straight, not hit the brakes or not hit the gas. And that's what they're doing. They're taking a wait and see.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🏦 Treasury routes around a recalcitrant Fed via community-bank deregulation E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 1:11:09

Again, there was a really interesting anecdote where Bessent talked in the interview about how he really wants to deregulate and loosen up bank lending standards, particularly at the community level. And I think that this is one very interesting thing that is a workaround to the Fed.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E202 · 2024-11-01 ▶ 19:15

a lot of the debt on those buildings, it's all owned by the commercial banks that you're talking about, the regional banks.

Chamath support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E202 · 2024-11-01 ▶ 18:38

there is a huge credit crisis looming amongst some of these large charter holding banks because of this exact issue

Friedberg support ×3 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E202 · 2024-11-01 ▶ 16:51

the unrealized losses on banks' balance sheets today is higher than it was in 2008

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E174 · 2024-04-12 ▶ 36:17

I would expect that if rates stay higher or longer, that's going to create tremendous stress on commercial real estate and therefore on the regional banking system that made all these loans to commercial real estate developers

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E171 · 2024-03-22 ▶ 1:06:41

they're hoping that rates will come down fast enough and occupancy rates will go up fast enough that no one has to foreclose. But if rates don't come down, then you have a real problem... But if rates stay higher longer, then you're going to see some real distress. Including the regional banking system.

Friedberg support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E165 · 2024-02-09 ▶ 1:12:28

when half of that debt is held by banks and thrifts that, as we've talked about, have such a close ratio to deposits that you can actually see many banks become technically insolvent if the debt starts to default

Sacks support ×3 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E165 · 2024-02-09 ▶ 1:16:47

So I would say that there's a huge amount of equity that's been written off. But in addition to that, there's a lot of debt holders who are in trouble too. And that debt is held by regional banks. So these commercial loan portfolios are significantly impaired. That's what we saw with Community Bank of New York is that their stock cratered when they reported higher than expected losses in their commercial real estate portfolio.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington rescues commercial real estate with a structured lending program E165 · 2024-02-09 ▶ 1:26:45

I mean, Janet Yellen is going to bail these folks out. That means you won't bail out the banks themselves, but you'll bail out the creditors, obviously. The people holding the bag. They'll get bailed.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington rescues commercial real estate with a structured lending program E165 · 2024-02-09 ▶ 1:12:28

And this is where, going back to my speculation a couple months ago, kind of gets revisited, if you're actually talking about a two-third write-down on the value in these funds, most of that being pension funds, you're not going to see governments let that happen. You're going to see the federal government. There's going to be some action at some point... there's going to need to be some sort of structured solution to support retirees and pensioners, because that's ultimately who ends up holding the bag in this massive write-down.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E163 · 2024-01-26 ▶ 5:50

That could reveal weakness in the regional banking system. Remember, we had a banking crisis in March of last year that BTFP sort of papered over.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E162 · 2024-01-19 ▶ 46:35

there's a lot of regional banks who are in trouble because they're the ones who made all these loans to these sponsors.

Sacks oppose ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Fed's bank funding facility only kicks the can — massive rate cuts are the exit E161 · 2024-01-13 ▶ 21:53

if there's an oil shock, I think you can kiss Ray Kutz goodbye because that's going to percolate through the whole economy and have a big impact on inflation. So I just think that there's a lot of downside to these very optimistic projections that we're going to get these huge Ray Kutz.

Friedberg oppose ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Fed's bank funding facility only kicks the can — massive rate cuts are the exit E161 · 2024-01-13 ▶ 17:14

So I think the market is currently saying no cuts in March and high probability of cuts in June ... it may be the case that rates are going to need to stay higher for longer.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏦 Regional banks still sick — Fed must extend BTFP E160 · 2024-01-06 ▶ 38:26

I do not think that the balance sheets of regional banks are healthy enough to survive without this continued liquidity [BTFP]... regional banks are still in pretty bad shape with impaired commercial debt portfolios... they need this liquidity as long as the yield curve remains inverted.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Fed's bank funding facility only kicks the can — massive rate cuts are the exit E156 · 2023-12-08 ▶ 33:16

I think there will be a rate cut in Q1 and I think this is the Biden bailout

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🏦 Fed's bank funding facility only kicks the can — massive rate cuts are the exit E152 · 2023-11-03 ▶ 18:33

It looks like the markets are stable. Let's cut rates, right? Let's reintroduce some demand into the market.

Chamath support ×2 ▼ on 📈 SVB failure triggers deposit flight out of the regional banks E152 · 2023-11-03 ▶ 35:43

Well, book value is a term that you need to put in quotes. So my question would be, what are the rules around the real mark to market? Because I think that when we talked about the banking crisis, the biggest problem was these guys were playing fast and loose with valuations.

Sacks oppose ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington rescues commercial real estate with a structured lending program E152 · 2023-11-03 ▶ 36:59

So I mostly see this Biden program as symbolic, but the question is whether the symbolism will actually drive better behavior by these blue cities.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington rescues commercial real estate with a structured lending program E152 · 2023-11-03 ▶ 38:31

I personally think they're just trying to find more ways to pump money into supporting commercial real estate markets because of the issues we just highlighted. And I think this is the first of what will likely be several programs to support, framed as things like affordable housing, but really designed to support the economic loss impairment that's going to be inevitable at some point.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 📈 SVB failure triggers deposit flight out of the regional banks E151 · 2023-10-27 ▶ 1:08:15

major US banks are facing large unrealized losses. Bank of America had unrealized losses of $131 billion on securities in Q3