If you are a banker and expect interest rates to rise in the future, would

Finance1

New member
you want to make short-term....? If you are a banker and expect interest rates to rise in the future, would you want to make short-term or long-term loans?
 
you'd lean toward short term and/or loans with variable interest rates.

the issue with long term, fixed rate loans in a rising interest rate environment is that your funding sources will trickle away leaving you exposed to the losses due to the rising rates.

a bank's objective is to have their portfolio of loans be offset as to interest rate terms and variability by their portfolio of deposits and other funding sources. Risk of this sort is not something a prudently run bank wants to take -- which is why banks do not want to be forced to hold 5% of the mortgage loans they extend; they've no funding for anything like that time frame.

[the bank's solution will be to stop making fixed rate mortgage loans completely and force that business into non-bank subsidiaries which issue long term debt as funding. since the amount of such long term debt is limited, they'll also limit the volume of such loans.]
 
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