Every year, natural disasters have catastrophic consequences and cause billions of dollars of property damage. With climate change, the impacts are only getting worse.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. SVB was taken over by the FDIC last Friday after depositors, fearing the bank would soon be unable to pay its debts, began withdrawing their money at an alarming rate.  Smith experts Cliff Rossi and Bill Longbrake recently spoke with Progyan Basu, clinical professor of Accounting and Information Assurance, about the impact of this failure on the banking industry and the economy as a whole.

Health safety for residents following the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, has been a top concern. Has it really been safe enough to return – both for the short- and long-term?

The Federal Reserve Board has engaged six of the biggest U.S. banks in a pilot Climate Scenario Analysis (CSA) to assess and “advance the ability of supervisors and banks to analyze and manage emerging climate-related financial risks.”

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business will offer a new track in climate finance to students in the Master of Finance degree program, starting in spring 2024. 

FTX postmortems have included Axios describing the cryptocurrency exchange as a “house of cards” comparable to Enron, Theranos, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Madoff Investment Securities. Plus, Moody’s writes the collapse “will radically transform the crypto ecosystem, further shaking trust and raising doubts around its ongoing prospects.”

Inflation, soaring interest rates and massive financial market volatility have dampened end-of-year projections for the U.S. economy. But housing, in a historically low mortgage-rate environment, has been an outlier amid the disorder – until recently. Now, clouds are on the horizon, says Smith’s Clifford Rossi, and rumblings suggest all may not be well with U.S. housing. So, “to determine whether we’re looking at a Cat 5 hurricane or merely a steady rain, we need to scrutinize the host of variables affecting this market.”

Hurricane Ian is now a tropical storm, but estimates for the storm’s Florida landfall included a million-plus homes at risk for damage, with overall damages and losses expected to top $67 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Experts from the University of Maryland and the investment management firm Conning will discuss a new approach to modeling climate risk to financial markets, in a free webinar at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022, hosted by the Center for Financial Policy (CFP) at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The Federal Reserve’s bank stress test is “capricious” and “arbitrary.” . . . “It’s inconsistent. It’s not transparent. It’s too volatile.” These descriptors came late last week from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during his bank’s quarterly earnings call. It was a response to results of the latest, annual stress test – the Fed’s response to the 2008 financial crisis to help ensure that large, systemically important banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand future crises.