BTN with Ethan Heisler

Higher rates are coming and Marty Leibowitz’s insights into bond pricing could not be more relevant. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for professional Insights and commentary on bank treasury issues, investment portfolio strategy, and more. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , and Amazon . Follow us on LinkedIn.

Tune in to this month’s episode of the Bank Treasury Murder Mystery series to help solve the case of a dead bank treasurer, a Treasury bond, and an empty safe. On February 22, 1878, J.W. Barron went to work and never came home when bank robbers hit the Dexter Savings Bank in Maine. Join your co-hosts, Janet and Sheila, as they piece together what happened that day in the late afternoon and connect...

In addition to telling Senators this month during his confirmation that he is not a sock puppet, Kevin Warsh insisted that the Fed’s balance sheet is too big, is harming the economy, and that his job on Day 1 will be to shrink it back to where it was before anyone had ever heard of QE. But here is a question for the newsletter’s fellow bloggers, posters, and readers: how has it hurt the economy? B...

Sometimes, bank treasurers might feel like they’re living in a make-believe world. It’s really tough to stay focused when they’re worried about things like a war in Iran, economic uncertainty, political instability, Fed uncertainty, and big changes like moving to instant payments, rapid industry consolidation, and new, empowered fintech competitors, NDFIs, and AI—all at the same time. They also ne...

Tried as he might on his African safari vacation, your editor in chief could not ignore the news from back home. He saw a lot of lions, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, hippos, elephants, cheetahs, and leopards, witnessed real-life drama when a cheetah tried and failed to kill a baby wildebeest, and spent countless hours with a guide to point out all the amazing birds in the Serengeti. But all he could f...

Trump’s feud with Powell adds to the chaos in financial markets, but recalls many other episodes in American history when presidents and central bankers clashed. From Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle fighting over the future of the Second Bank of the United States, to Harry Truman firing then-Fed Chair Tom McCabe, which led to the 1951 Treasury Accord, politicians and the Fed manage an uneasy al...

AI is the future, and the future is now, at least it is one of next year's top priorities for every bank treasurer at large and small banks and credit unions. The question is how? How do you implement AI? The answer to that question is another question: what do you want to do with it? Answering that question is not the IT department's or the intern's responsibility. The use cases need leadership a...

You heard about the business with the pennies, right? Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for professional Insights and commentary on bank treasury issues, investment portfolio strategy, and more. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , and Amazon . Follow us on LinkedIn.

Dear Bank Treasury Subscribers, Connecting the dots is an age-old pastime, but the dots that bank treasurers see these days are very confusing and challenging to connect, at least without some form of AI. Even the voting members of the FOMC are not sure what picture they see. Amid significant market volatility and economic uncertainty, bank treasurers are just trying to keep their eyes on the hori...

Dear Bank Treasury Subscribers, Deposit insurance reform is back in the news. You must have heard about it. The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on it this month, and judging by the comments from the committee members, they could not have chosen a better bipartisan topic to take up and do some legislating like they get paid to do. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at the...

Dear Bank Treasury Subscribers, If you are like most of the bank treasurers who talk to our editors these days, you probably think that the stablecoin hoopla is a fad, a distraction from what you are thinking about right now. We hear you. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for professional Insights and commentary on bank treasury issues, investme...

The banking industry reported another solid quarter of earnings, which met and, in some respects, exceeded analyst estimates. Storm clouds on the horizon remain muted… Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for professional Insights and commentary on bank treasury issues, investment portfolio strategy, and more. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , an...

This month’s newsletter covers speculation on the timing of the first rate cut, the positives and negatives of an inverted yield curve and higher for longer, the effect of QT on reserves and bank deposits now that the balance of the RRP appears to have hit a floor, and why rate cuts will not necessarily lead to lower deposit rates. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktr...

This month's newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gerry Corrigan, the sixth president of the New York Fed from 1985 to 1993, known as the Fed's plumber, the go-to guy Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan turned to in a financial crisis. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for professional Insights and commentary on bank treasury issues, investment...

Wonders never cease in the bank treasury world, what with earthquakes in the metro NYC area to eclipses of the sun, but surely the sudden flattening of the yield curve this month, which is now half as inverted as it was last month, must stir the imagination of even the most experienced bank treasurer. This month’s newsletter pulls back the curtain on key talking points in the bank treasury world,...

On the first anniversary of the crisis last March, this month’s newsletter looks at the unique circumstances and mistakes that ultimately led to the failure of SVB and lessons learned. One of those lessons is to beware of lessons learned, especially when they are based on “flawed, post-mortem reviews,” as Fed Governor Bowman argued this month. Even if the Basel 3 Endgame proposal looks like it is...

This month’s newsletter discusses how bank treasurers restructured their underwater bond portfolios last quarter when the 10-year rallied in November and December. It also explains why bank treasurers, most of whom believe they have more to fear from the Fed cutting rates by 300 basis points than raising them, are more hedged for higher rates going into 2024 than they were going into 2023. Subscri...

Ethan Heisler talks to privacy experts about the value of personal information and what banks need to do to protect their employee and customer data given escalating risks in the cyber-security space. Leading 25-year expert in cybersecurity, Jonathan Nguyen, and Tom Daly, founder and chief of MePrism explain why companies need to think beyond just preventing data breaches and make a real plan for...

There are a lot of strange things going on in the bank treasury world, and as always, bank treasurers know to prepare for anything. You have a yield curve that is inverted for the longest time in decades, and where the marginal cost to fund a loan makes it difficult to lend profitably. You have high-interest rate volatility as reflected in the MOVE index that, like the inverted yield curve, has pe...

Sam Theodore, a veteran European bank analyst, reflects on what to expect from the unexpected both in the US and in the Eurozone. Has digitalization changed the nature of deposit funding? What new metrics do analysts need to consider, and how do artificial intelligence and machine learning fit into credit analysis? How should analysts incorporate exogenous risk into their thinking about credit saf...

In this age of heightened uncertainty, bank treasurers are reviewing and updating their ALM toolkits. Join me for a conversation with Michael Riddle and Geoffrey Sharp to find out how ERIS SOFR Swap Futures offers users the sophistication of an interest rate swap with the simplicity of a futures contract. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasurynewsletter.com for pr...

Moorad Choudhry, author of The Principles of Banking , on his takeaways from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, and First Republic, and what he has learned from his study of U.K. banking that bank treasurers in the States should consider as they seek to shore up their interest rate and liquidity risk management. Subscribe to The Bank Treasury Newsletter and Podcast at thebanktreasuryne...