Harris Simmons
Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Well, you know, the jury is still out. My hope is that, there'll be regulators and congress and others will come at this really thoughtfully because it has, beyond the banking system, it has a lot of implications for the housing markets, for example, I mean, a third of all the agency mortgage backed securities are held in the banking system. And if you create another surge held by the Fed, and you know, if those two, that two-thirds of those total holdings are trying to get rid of, I think it has a lot of implications for the 30-year mortgage [and thus for] [ph] housing. I truly believe that most banks that are more traditional, you know, half their deposits are more kind of insured. You know, they're trying to balance, this balancing act between managing earnings at risk and creating some stability to the earnings stream, and the economic value of equity. And to do that, I mean, that's why we put a couple of slides in here showing, you know, if we weren't using some of these tools, mortgage backed securities swaps, etcetera, you know, we'd be very asset sensitive, and you'd, you know, might be good for the economic value of equity, but not so much for earnings, stability. And so, and I’d also know, frankly, though, a lot of talk about stress tests. The fact of the matter is, that there's a built, the stress tests have traditionally really focused on the more traditional causes of a trouble in the industry, which has been credit related. And there's a built-in incentive to create duration in those stress tests so that you have an earnings stream during a period of economic weakness. And so all of those are the kinds of things I, you know, I would hope will be thought through and that there's a balanced view of all of this, because I think the couple of banks that really have ignited this, you know, created this storm had very idiosyncratic, particularly Silicon Valley, obviously, but very idiosyncratic kinds of business models and deposit structures. And we've got to be careful that we don't throw out all the, you know, a lot of babies with the bathwater. So, that's kind of how I feel, but I don't know, how it's going to get resolved. I expect that there'll be a lot of discussion and probably some new regulation, I think we're probably of a size that if they're sensible about it, I think we'll also be, kind of tapered in, I don't think it will be sudden. There's some very, very large banks, if you go about this with a [indiscernible], you've got some of the largest banks in the country that are going to have to raise tens upon tens upon tens of billions of dollars of capital. I'm not sure the market could even absorb it very well. So, just some random thoughts about it.