Bonds were seen as a safe haven – but they are central to this bank crisis | Toby Nangle

Troubles at Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse are due partly to impact of rising interest rates

If you're a banker, it's been a month to forget. Two regional US banks have gone to the wall, central banks on both sides of the Atlantic have been forced to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency lending to shore up the financial system, and the Swiss financial group Credit Suisse has been ignominiously absorbed into the larger UBS at the behest of its regulator. About half a trillion dollars have been wiped from banks' stock market valuations.

Although history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes sufficiently to ask whether we are on the brink of another global financial crisis. A bit of context for the current troubles might help answer.