Though Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank con­tributed to its own demise, the root cause of this cri­sis is the fact that pri­vate banks own gov­ern­ment bonds. If they did­n’t, then SVB would still be sol­vent.

Its bank­rupt­cy was the result of the price of Trea­sury bonds falling, because The Fed­er­al Reserve increased inter­est rates. As inter­est rates rise, the val­ue of Trea­sury Bonds falls. With the resale val­ue of its bonds plung­ing, the total val­ue of SVB’s assets (which were main­ly Bonds, Reserves, and Loans to house­holds and firms) fell below the val­ue of its Lia­bil­i­ties (which are main­ly the deposits of house­holds and firms), and it col­lapsed.

I was asked to con­tribute to an Ital­ian online pub­li­ca­tion’s trib­ute to John Ken­neth Gal­braith, by answer­ing some ques­tions about the rel­e­vance of his major work The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) six decades lat­er. These were my respons­es.

About sixty years later, how relevant and actual is the vision of the American economy and economic system proposed by John K. Galbraith in his “The new industrial state”?

Read­ing The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) again, six decades after it was first pub­lished, high­light­ed for me just how far eco­nom­ic the­o­ry has retreat­ed from real­i­ty since the 1960s.

I was asked to con­tribute to an Ital­ian online pub­li­ca­tion’s trib­ute to John Ken­neth Gal­braith, by answer­ing some ques­tions about the rel­e­vance of his major work The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) six decades lat­er. These were my respons­es.

About sixty years later, how relevant and actual is the vision of the American economy and economic system proposed by John K. Galbraith in his “The new industrial state”?

Read­ing The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) again, six decades after it was first pub­lished, high­light­ed for me just how far eco­nom­ic the­o­ry has retreat­ed from real­i­ty since the 1960s.