Steve Keen’s Debt Watch

Steven Hail is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Torrens University, having previously been a Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Adelaide. Gabrielle Bond is CEO of the Modern Money Lab, and closely works with Steven Hail to develop a strong set of course around MMT and ecological economics. Website: https://modernmoneylab.org.au/ Lecture Steve Keen gave for the Modern Money Lab: https://youtu.be/5LvyxH3O7kE

Though Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank con­tributed to its own demise, the root cause of this cri­sis is the fact that pri­vate banks own gov­ern­ment bonds. If they did­n’t, then SVB would still be sol­vent. Its bank­rupt­cy was the result of the price of Trea­sury bonds falling, because The Fed­er­al Reserve increased inter­est rates. As inter­est rates rise, the val­ue of Trea­sury Bonds falls. With the resale val­ue of its bonds plung­ing, the total val­ue of SVB’s assets (which were...