The United States experienced the second-largest bank collapse in its history on Friday as the Silicon Valley Bank (svb) was taken over by the U.S. government. Signature Bank followed suit on Sunday, and more could follow.

Why: svb is in a bit of a unique situation. It banks largely with tech start-ups. Over the last few years, deposits have exploded as these start-ups had more cash on hand. svb had to do something with this money—it’s expected to generate a return and pay interest. The money came in too fast to loan out, so it bought safe U.S. Treasury bonds and other long-term assets.

The trouble is, rising interest rates have pushed down the value of earlier Treasuries, issued when interest rates were low. (Why buy someone’s secondhand Treasury bond that pays 0.5 percent interest when you can buy a brand new one that pays 4 percent?)

High interest rates also slowed the U.S. economy. The tech start-ups that parked their spare cash in svb needed it back. Once they started withdrawing, svb had to sell its assets at a loss. Regulators and rating agencies flagged the issue.

Once people were aware there was a problem, they rushed to get their cash out. The U.S. government guarantees that the first $250,000 you have in a bank account is safe. But svb’s business customers often had a lot more than that in the bank—so they were quick to try to get their money out.

The next Lehman Brothers? Maybe not. svb customers were uniquely vulnerable. Fifty-six percent of svb’s assets were in securities—things like Treasury bonds. For Bank of America, it is exactly half that: 28 percent.

That said, bank runs can easily be contagious. No one wants to risk seeing his life savings erased—so people are quick to withdraw them if they think they’re at risk.

Other smallish-size banks could be in trouble. First Republic Bank has seen its shares fall 75 percent. Arizona-based Western Alliance Bank is down 80 percent. PacWest’s value has halved and is seeing its share prices fall by around a third.

These banks may not sound too important, but one third of U.S. deposits are in small banks.

The collapse continued even after Joe Biden promised to do “whatever is needed” to protect banks, and the U.S. government promised to protect deposits.

The Fed’s fault? As economist Daniel Lacalle pointed out, “svb made one big mistake: Follow exactly the incentives created by loose monetary policy and regulation.”

svb simply did what the U.S. Federal Reserve encouraged and incentivized it to do. Lacalle wrote: “The incredible growth and success of svb could not have happened without negative rates, ultra-loose monetary policy, and the tech bubble that burst in 2022.”

The Fed’s low interest rates encouraged investors to get rid of cash and buy assets or stakes in companies instead, and svb helped make that happen. As more cash rolled in, it invested in Treasuries. “This is what the Fed was buying in billions every month, these were the lowest-risk assets according to all regulations and, according to the Fed and all mainstream economists, inflation was purely ‘transitory,’ a base-effect anecdote,” wrote Lacalle. “What could go wrong?” A lot, it turns out.

Lacalle wrote:

svb did nothing but follow regulation and monetary policy incentives and Keynesian economists’ recommendations point by point. svb was the epitome of mainstream economic thinking. And mainstream killed the tech star. …

svb is a casualty of the narrative that money printing does not cause inflation and can continue forever. They embraced it wholeheartedly, and now they are gone.

The U.S. spent a decade printing money and pushing ultra-low interest rates. Other central banks did the same, but they all exist within a fundamentally U.S.-based system.

The negative effects of this policy are only beginning to set in. The inflation plaguing the world is just one symptom of many. So is the bankruptcy of svb and others.

Get woke, go broke? There is no denying svb was a woke bank. Republican Congressman James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called it “one of the most woke banks” in America.

The bank had a “safe space catch-up” where employees could share their coming out stories, sent its personnel to serve on lgbt panels, and boasted about its commitment to boost levels of homosexuals or racial minorities within senior staff. The bank aimed to be carbon neutral by 2025 and promised at least $5 billion in loans and investments to climate change measures.

The bank spent nine months without a chief risk operator. Shortly before that vacancy opened, it boasted, “We have a chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [dei] officer, an executive-led dei Steering Committee and Employee Resource Groups with executive sponsors focused on these objectives.”

Signature Bank, the other to go under, famously shut down Donald Trump’s bank account.

Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus warned:

These banks are badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on the one thing they should, which is shareholder returns. Instead of protecting the shareholders and their employees, they are more concerned about the social policies. And I think it’s probably a badly run bank.

They’ve been there for a lot of years. It’s pathetic that so many people lost money that won’t get it back.

RealClearMarkets says it should have been obvious svb was heading for trouble. No one at the bank stopped it. Regulators “could have stopped the excess risk-taking with a phone call, but didn’t; yet they were informed regularly as the risk built.” Did regulators go easy on svb because they shared their political goals?

Turning the world against America: When American banks are in trouble, the rest of the world suffers. Credit Suisse Group AG’s shares are at a record low, down 15 percent, spreading fear of systemic problems in Europe.

The Bible condemns the widespread corruption in America.

One of the core passages guiding our analysis right now comes from the book of Amos, which is an end-time book for the people descended from ancient Israel, most notably America. The Anchor Bible Dictionary states, “Amos decried the social injustice, the oppression of the poor, and the lack of any moral or ethical values on the part of the rich and powerful. According to Amos, the spokesman of [God], Israel was a violent, oppressive and exploitative society. The poor had to sell themselves into slavery to pay off trivial debts (Amos 2:6; 8:6). The rich falsified weights and measures (Amos 8:5) and traded dishonestly (Amos 8:6). Even the courts, the last bastion of hope for the poor, were corrupt. Judges were bribed to cheat the poor out of what little they had (Amos 2:7; 5:10, 12). In fact, Israel was no longer capable of acting with justice (Amos 3:10; cf. 5:7, 24; 6:12). Truth and honesty were now hated (Amos 5:10).”

ftx founder Sam Bankman-Fried showed that you can get away with almost anything if you boast of the correct political leanings.

The turmoil in America’s finances tie into another key prophecy. Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in 1984 that a massive banking crisis in America “could suddenly result in triggering European nations to unite as a new world power, larger than either the Soviet Union or the U.S.”

America’s financial mismanagement and corruption is causing its own, long prophesied, financial destruction. But its people won’t be the only ones hurt by this.

The fallout of this collapse will quickly spread to Europe.

Revelation 17 forecasts the rise of a “beast” power, or empire. This power has risen numerous times throughout history and is led by a woman, or church in biblical symbolism. This can only be referring to a European power. This power is a union of “ten kings” (verse 12) who shall “have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (verse 13).

“What will cause these nations to unite so forcefully?” asked Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “It is very difficult to unite nations into ‘one mind’! That’s an incredibly challenging undertaking. … Mr. Armstrong had profound insight in specifically forecasting that the catalyst for this dramatic unification would be a massive financial crisis that starts in America and ripples out from there. Look at conditions in America and the world today, and it is not difficult to see just how right he was!”

He concluded: “Watch the economic situation in America closely, and its effect on Europe—and see if this dramatic prophecy from Mr. Armstrong doesn’t come to pass just as he said it would!”

This financial crisis will eventually cause Europe to unite—and turn against America. In the meantime, they’re already turning European nations against the United States—and prompting them to lay the foundations of their own, new economic system. You can learn more about this prophesied power in our free book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.