Moody’s Chief Economist: ‘Wouldn’t Be Surprised’ by More Bank Failures

On Monday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if we saw more bank failures, but that he doesn’t think any future failures will be major.

Host John McArdle asked, “Do you think we’re done with bank failures? Do you think what’s happened has sort of shaken loose the banks that were worst-positioned, or are there more to come?”

Zandi responded, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another failure or two or three, but I think they’ll be small, John, I don’t think they’ll be a big deal. And I don’t — at this point, given all of the support that the government’s been providing for the system — most significantly with the failed banks, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, they stepped up and they said, regardless of whether your deposit amount is below the FDIC deposit insurance limit of 250,000 or above, your money is good, it’s going to be guaranteed by the government — so, once the government did that, I think we should all feel confident that the banking system is safe, that our money is safe, that if we have deposits in banks, that we’ll be able to get that out when we need it. There may be other failures, but I don’t think we should be at all worried that we’re not going to get our money out at this point because of the government support.”

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