It’s the U.S., not Europe’s banking system that’s an issue, leading economic experts state

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SVB is 'probably the first of a series' of bank failures, Ambrosetti's De Molli says

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A freight barge on the River Rhine near the European Central Bank (ECB) head office at sundown in the monetary district in Frankfurt, Germany,

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Europe discovered its lessons after the monetary crisis and is now in a strong position to weather additional tension in its banking system, numerous economic experts and policymakers state.

A main style at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy on Thursday and Friday was the capacity for additional instability in monetary markets, emerging from issues in the banking sector– especially versus a background of tightening up monetary conditions.

The collapse of U.S.-based Silicon Valley Bank and of numerous other local loan providers in early March triggered worries of contagion, advanced by the emergency situation rescue of Credit Suisse by Swiss competing UBS.

Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic took definitive action and vowed additional assistance if required. Markets have actually staged something of a healing today.

Valerio De Molli, handling partner and CEO of The European House– Ambrosetti, informed CNBC on the sidelines of the occasion on Thursday that “uncertainty and anxiety” would continue to pester markets this year.

“The more worrying factor is uncertainty in the banking industry, not so much about Europe — the ECB (European Central Bank) has done incredibly well, the European Commission also — the euro zone is stable and sound and profitable, also, but what could happen particularly in the United States is a mystery,” De Molli informed CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick.

De Molli recommended that the collapse of SVB would likely be “the first of a series” of bank failures. However, he competed that “the lessons learned at a global level, but in Europe in particular” had actually made it possible for the euro zone to support the “financial robustness and stability” of its banking system, rendering a repeat of the 2008 monetary crisis “impossible.”

The focus on “lessons learned” in Europe was echoed by George Papaconstantinou– teacher and dean at the European University Institute and previous Greek financing minister– who likewise revealed issues about the U.S.

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“We learned about the need to have fiscal and monetary policy working together, we learned that you need to be ahead of the markets and not five seconds behind, always, we learned about speed of response and the need for overwhelming response sometimes, so all of this is good,” Papaconstantinou informed CNBC on Friday.

He included that the advancements of SVB and Credit Suisse were down to “failures in risk management,” and, when it comes to SVB, likewise owed to “policy failures in the U.S.”

He especially pointed out previous President Donald Trump’s raising of the limit under which banks need to go through tension tests from $50 billion to $250 billion. This change to the post-crisis Dodd-Frank legislation successfully indicated that the fallen lending institution was exempt to a level of analysis that may have found its difficulties previously. The relocation of 2018 became part of a broad rollback of banking guidelines put in location in the after-effects of the crisis.

Although admiring the development made in Europe, Papaconstantinou stressed that it is prematurely to inform whether there is wider weak point in the banking system. He kept in mind that there is no space for complacency from policymakers and regulators, a lot of whom have actually assured ongoing watchfulness.

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“We are in an environment where interest rates are rising, therefore bond prices are falling, and therefore it is quite likely that banks find themselves with a hole, because they have invested in longer term instruments, and that is a problem,” he stated.

“We are in an environment of rising inflation, therefore a lot of the loans that they did on very low interest rates are problematic for them, so it is not a very comfortable environment. It is not an environment where we can sit back and say, ‘okay, this was just two blips, and we can continue as usual’. Not at all.”

‘Two- front war’

Spanish Economy Minister Nadia Calvi ño on Friday stated that banks in Spain have even more powerful solvency and liquidity positions than a lot of their European peers.

“We do not see any signs of stress in the Spanish market, other than the general volatility we see in financial markets these days,” she stated, including that the circumstance is now “totally different” from what it remained in the added to the European financial obligation crisis in 2012.

“We learnt the lessons of the financial crisis, there’s been deep restructuring in this decade, and they are in a stronger position than in the past, obviously.”

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Unenviably, reserve banks need to battle a “two-front war” and at the same time fight high inflation and instability in the monetary sector, kept in mind Gene Frieda, executive vice president and international strategist at Pimco.

“There is now something happening that is outside the Fed’s control in the banking sector, and we all have our views in terms of how bad that gets, but my own sense is that we’re not facing a banking crisis, that there will be some tightening in credit conditions, it will bring a recession forward. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s certainly not discounted in the equity market,” Frieda informed CNBC on Friday.

“We’re still fighting inflation, but, at the same time, we’re fighting these uncertainties in the banking sector. All of the central banks will try to distinguish between the two and say, on the one hand, we can use certain policies to deal with the financial instability. On the other hand, we can use interest rates to fight inflation. But those two will get muddied, and I think, inevitably, financial instability will become the one that’s dominant.”