Academic analysis of Silicon Valley Bank

Charles Read, an affiliated lecturer for the Faculty, has an opinion piece in the Conversation regarding the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. He looks at how interest rates helped trigger its collapse and what central bankers should do next.

He says although SVB had been ailing for some time, the speed of its collapse took nearly all commentators – as well as its customers, mostly from the tech sector – by surprise. However he says the collapse was predictable, and ties in with the two situations he describe in his book, which was launched in Cambridge last week. Dr Charles Read’s new book Calming the Storms: the Carry Trade, the Banking School and British Financial Crises since 1825, is about the role that interest rates have played in causing financial crises over the past two centuries.