Amid the Collapse of Three U.S. Banks, Is the U.S. Petrodollar Facing the Same Fate?

Considering the recent turmoil in the U.S. banking system, the trajectory of the global power of the U.S. dollar comes under scrutiny, as too, the economy of our entire country (13 min read.)

Photo by Live Richer on Unsplash

In the past year, the upper echelons within the Western oil and gas industry have been observing a shift in global energy markets toward China, Russia and India.

Indeed, amid the deepening conflict and escalating uncertainties between Ukraine and Russia, we have witnessed Western sanctions against Russia, and China and India’s willingness to secure energy supplies at “enormous discounts” from the successor state to the former Soviet Union.

However, might closer economic relations between Russia, and China and India—but particularly China—signal a trajectory in falling dominance for the U.S. dollar, which could profoundly impact the U.S. energy markets?

To explore this wavering concern, let us firstly open a brief chapter in history.

The U.S. dollar reigns supreme

Before the onset of the 20th century, the value of a currency was pegged to the value of gold. As a result, a bank would have been limited by its gold reserves when providing a loan. Then, the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established a system where gold became the basis for the U.S. dollar, and consequently, other currencies were tied to the U.S. dollar’s value—those of 44 allied nations to be precise.

But the Bretton Woods system formally ended in 1971 when U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that America would no longer exchange gold for U.S. currency, thus taking the country off the gold standard. Afterwards, the U.S. dollar spiralled into depreciation, but the sale of U.S. oil played an essential role in bolstering its value.

In 1974, the Nixon administration cut a deal with Saudi Arabia, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Essentially, the Saudis would designate their crude oil sales in U.S. dollars and obtain American military supplies and equipment. Thus, consistent demand for the U.S. was ensured, especially as other OPEC members negotiated similar deals; hence the term “petrodollar” was coined to denote U.S. dollars exchanged for crude oil exports.

To this very day, the petrodollar still rules—yet, for how long though?

Russia and China strike a closer economic relationship

But the era where the U.S. dollar dominates has been in question year after year, not least due to increasing competition from China, which boasts the world’s second-largest economy, the largest consumer of most commodities, and now, its expanding economic relationship with Russia—more specifically, in guzzling up the Great Bear’s crude oil at 40 percent discount.

Indeed, by June 2022, China’s spending on Russian energy had escalated to $25 billion since the warfare between Ukraine and Russia began in February, almost double the value of the same period in 2021.

Since sanctions were placed by Western powers on Russia, be it the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, Russia has been looking to the East to secure long-term sales in the energy market, particularly its largest export—crude oil. As a result, its former Cold War rival, China, snapped up a record quantity of Russian crude oil in May 2022, raising purchases to $7.47 billion, about $1 billion more than the previous month and double that in 2021.

Furthermore, Russia’s state-owned energy operator Gazprom agreed to a 30-year contract with China National Petroleum Corporation in February 2022, with 10 billion cubic meters of annual gas set to flow through a new pipeline in the next few years. And in September 2022, the two state-owned energy giants agreed to use Russian roubles and Chinese yuan to pay for Russian gas supplies to China.

How could this increasingly cozy economic relationship between China and Russia effect the value of the U.S. dollar?

Impact on the U.S. dollar

Suppose Russia and China are to continue trading crude oil in a currency other than the U.S. dollar. With China now the world’s largest oil importer, what would be the trajectory of the dominance of the petrodollar—and thus power for the U.S. alone?

Furthermore, central banks worldwide are increasingly keen to hold China’s yuan as a reserve currency. According to the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) Asset Management’s annual reserve manager survey of June 2022, around 85 percent of central banks said they are invested or are considering investing in the yuan—that’s an increase of 81 percent compared to 2021.

Moreover, the UBS report estimates that reserve managers at central banks, on average, are seeking to hold 5.8 percent of their reserves in China’s currency in a decade, a sharp increase from the 2.8 percent level reported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in late December 2022.

According to the IMF, as central banks look to diversify their holdings, the U.S. dollar’s dominance has been dented due to a quarter of reserve managers turning to the Chinese yuan and three-quarters exploring currencies from nations that typically play limited roles as reserve assets. Furthermore, this major financial agency of the United Nations adds that:

“A characterization of the evolution of the international reserve system in the last 20 years is thus as ongoing movement away from the dollar, a recent if still modest rise in the role of the renminbi [Chinese yuan], and changes in market liquidity, relative returns and reserve management enhancing the attractions of nontraditional reserve currencies. These observations provide hints of how the international system may evolve going forward.”

Though the U.S. dollar remains the world’s most prominent reserve currency, with central banks holding around 59 percent of their reserves in the dollar, for China to continue pushing the yuan to take on a more significant share of the global reserve currency, how will the U.S. ensure the top spot in the long term?

Yet, despite the significance of the U.S. dollar in the global markets and despite the dollar being its strongest in two decades, it is ranked as the 9th strongest currency. In contrast, the Kuwaiti dinar has secured the top spot, while the British pound sterling and the Euro hold the 6th and 8th position, respectively.

Historically, the U.S. dollar reached an all-time high in February 1985—before a dramatic plunge by December 1987. Since then, the dollar has experienced steady waves.

Thus far, the Chinese yuan hasn’t made the top ten. But no doubt the Red Dragon is eager to rise and boost its currency. So how will the U.S. manage Chinese competition and retain the value of its greenbacks in the long term?

While the strength of the dollar is holding—albeit wavering—it is still holding. But, now, how do we explain the latest debacle with three U.S. banks hitting rock bottom within days of each other?

Three U.S. banks collapse within days

On Sunday, March 12, the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a joint statement about New York City’s Signature Bank—that this leading institution in cryptocurrency lending “closed today by its state chartering authority.”

The statement went on to explain they would make a “systemic risk exception” for Signature and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a bank focused on the tech and startup sector that was also shut down, allowing both banks’ clients to have full access to their deposits. They added that:

“As with the resolution of [SVB], no losses will be borne by the taxpayer. Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.”

Signature served as one of the leading banks in the cryptocurrency industry—the largest alongside Silvergate, which also announced its impending liquidation on March 8. As of December 31, 2022, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing. By March 10, it had a market value of $4.4 billion after a 40 percent sell-off this year, according to FactSet.

While the go-to bank for tech startups, SVB, collapsed on March 10, Signature also saw its shares plunge following deposit outflows. New York state officials reportedly said closing the bank was made “in light of market events” to protect the bank’s clients and prevent spreading the crisis throughout the financial system.

Let us pause and recollect a series of extraordinary banking failures. First, California-based, crypto-focused Silvergate announced its upcoming liquidation. Second, SVB imploded only two days later, the largest U.S. bank collapse since the financial crisis of 2008. Third, Signature drowned another two days later.

Yet despite sparked concerns, with many top lenders seeing their stocks plunge, President Joe Biden reassured Americans that the U.S. banking system is “safe.” 

President Biden says “the banking system is safe”

“Your deposits are safe,” Biden said in a March 13 set of remarks from the Roosevelt Room at the White House. “Let me also assure you we will not stop at this. We will do whatever is needed on top of all this.”

By law, up to $250,000 is insured for each depositor’s account in each bank. Still, the Biden administration and the Fed have announced they will make funding available to refund the startups and tech companies impacted by the bank closures.

Biden had also noted in a March 12 statement on his administration’s action to protect depositors at both banks, expressing he would hold those responsible for “this mess” accountable for their actions. Indeed, the statement articulated that:

“Over the weekend, and at my direction, [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen and my National Economic Council Director worked with banking regulators to address problems at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. I am pleased that they reached a prompt solution that protects American workers and small businesses, and keeps our financial system safe. The solution also ensures that taxpayer dollars are not put at risk.”

This “funding” to refund depositors from the Deposit Insurance Fund is financed primarily by the fees charged to banks after assessment, which can be traced to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, following the Great Depression to protect depositors when their banks collapsed. 

“Management of these banks will be fired. If the bank is taken over by FDIC, the people running the bank should not work there anymore,” Biden continued in his set of remarks, adding that investors would “not be protected” because they were aware of the risks involved.

U.S. bank stocks fall, and another 50 U.S. banks could fail

While President Biden, a.k.a. “Grandpa Joe,” aimed to provide Americans with peace of mind about the state of the U.S. banking system, reports revealed that major U.S. bank stocks, including Western Alliance Bancorporation, Charles Schwab Corp., First Republic Bank and PacWest Bancorp dropped considerably in the pre-market trading hours on that very same day.

Furthermore, according to former vice-president at Lehman Brothers Lawrence McDonald, another 50 U.S. regional lenders could fail amid rising banking uncertainty unless a “structural problem” is fixed.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers marked the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008, in which the financial markets seized up and restrained international banks from obtaining U.S. dollars.

During an interview with Russian news outlet RIA Novosti, McDonald accused the Fed and its Chairman Jerome Powell of having a lack of understanding over the risk of constant rate hikes for U.S. regional banks. Indeed, the Fed raised interest rates by 0.25 percent, the ninth increase in a year, attempting to counterbalance rising inflation with the latest turmoil in the banking system. McDonald went on to say:

“There’s going to be further damage. They [the Fed] have to cut rates and then they have to have a deposit guarantee, a larger one, that’s what they’re going to come up with... That’s a bailout. That’s basically the federal government taking on bank deposit risk.”

It could be argued that the Fed’s decision to pump $2.3 trillion into the U.S. economy during the coronavirus lockdown might have been channelled into firms like SVB, which invested in the tech industry and created overvalued stock, and falsely inflated prices.

Furthermore, this injection of trillions of dollars that landed in banks might have been invested in “safe assets” like bonds—but those bonds didn’t remain a reliable investment once the Fed began to raise rates, leading to the tumult of three U.S. banks collapsing within days.

Well, as of March 16, the Fed announced the launch of an “emergency loan program” to inject funds worth $2 trillion into the U.S. banking system. So that’s just great.

No, wait, another 186 banks could fail

According to a study, published by the Social Science Research Network on March 24, an additional 186 banks are at risk of collapse—even if 50 percent of their depositors withdraw their funds.

The paper, whose authors hail from the University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Columbia University and Stanford University, argues that the Fed’s interest rate hikes to reduce inflation have diminished the value of bank assets such as government bonds, and asset-backed securities such as mortgage-backed securities. The authors conclude that:

“If uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even small fire sales, substantially more banks are at risk. Overall, these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the U.S. banking system to uninsured depositor runs.”

On this note, a coalition of midsize U.S. banks has asked regulators to extend FDIC insurance to all deposits for the next two years, asserting that the step is necessary to stabilize the banking sector and avoid a potential crisis.

Let us remind ourselves that small and midsize banks account for over 50 percent of commercial and industrial lending, residential real estate lending and commercial real estate lending.

If federal regulators do not commit to such an arrangement, a significantly vast amount of money, notwithstanding full authority or power, could be transferred from midsize banks to America’s largest such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.

Midsize bank’s shares fall despite agreement to gain billions

It was widely reported on March 16 that 11 U.S. banks agreed to deposit $30 billion with midsize lender First Republic Bank, probably as an attempt to dampen panic among depositors fleeing regional banks. The lenders said in a statement that regional, midsize and small banks are “critical to the health and functioning of our financial system.”

Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo will inject $5 billion each, while Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will deposit $2.5 billion each. In addition, five other banks pledged deposits totaling $5 billion.

In another joint statement, Yellen, Powell, FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg and Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu praised the banks’ decision, noting “the show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system.”

Despite the move from the “too big to fail” banks, First Republic struggled, with its shares falling to all time new lows on March 20.

It goes without saying that the federal government will attempt to infuse “calm” into Americans worried about bank deposits—and subsequently, our financial security.

According to Sara Devereux, global head of investing giant Vanguard’s fixed-income group, recent events reflect a “sentiment contagion” rather than the “true systemic contagion” observed during the 2008 financial crisis.

Label recent events as you will.

But correct predictions have been made; for example, investor Robert Kiyosaki said during a March 13 interview with Fox Business, “I think the next bank to go is Credit Suisse…because the bond market is crashing.”

Indeed, by March 16, Credit Suisse became the first major global bank to take up an emergency lifeline; the investment bank announced it would borrow $54 billion from the Swiss central bank to avert liquidity after its shares and bonds plunged to a record low.

Events are not so random. Be prepared.

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