People are once again pulling large amounts of cash out of the US banking system.
According to newly updated stats compiled by the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) system, $79.16 billion exited American bank accounts from the start of the month through June 7th.
The deposit flight is a big reversal after two weeks of inflows into the system, and in the last year $803.73 billion has been drained out of customer accounts.
US banks now have a total of $17.20 trillion in deposits.
According to a new report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, American banks witnessed a record drop in deposits in the first quarter of the year.
Depositors withdrew $472 billion out of their accounts, breaking a 39 year record that goes back to the first day that the FDIC began tracking inflows and outflows.
After pausing rate hikes for the first time in more than a year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that the troubled commercial real estate sector will lead to further losses for US banks.
“To the extent that it’s well distributed, then the system could take losses. We do expect that there will be losses, but there will be banks that have concentrations, and those banks will experience larger losses. So we’re well aware of that, we’re monitoring it carefully…
It feels like something that will be around for some time, as opposed to something that will suddenly hit and work its way to systemic risk.”
Small banks are poised to bear the brunt of the commercial real estate downturn.
According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs, lenders with less than $250 billion in assets account for about 80% of US commercial real estate lending.
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