Banking stability worries go behind closed doors at IMF

Just a month after the biggest banking crisis in more than a decade, the world’s top economic and financial policymakers gathered in Washington and said surprisingly little about financial system stability – at least publicly. With financial markets calmed by strong policy actions to stem the outflow of bank deposits, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings were instead dominated by calls to keep up the fight against inflation, accelerate debt restructuring for poor countries and avoid geopolitical fragmentation of the global economy. Some officials conveyed a sense that banking system safety was further down the priority list of global economic problems. “One has managed to contain this crisis from spreading, so indeed there was not really so much focus during the IMF-World Bank meetings on this particular issue,” said European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis. “But it’s still something where we need to stay vigilant and address potential risks which may emerge in our financial system,” Dombrovskis told reporters. He added that the European Union’s banking system was stable, well capitalized with ample liquidity. World Bank President David Malpass and the IMF’s Middle East director Jihad Azour both suggested their concerns about banking system strains were mostly in the context of potentially reducing the availability of credit for emerging markets at a time when rising interest rates already were causing capital outflows. “As banking systems come under strain … there needs to be redoubled efforts to have capital flow to working capital,” Malpass told reporters on Thursday. But other meeting participants said that behind closed doors there were more pointed questions about the potential for similar shocks like the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the forced sale of global lender Credit Suisse.