Imagine that banks are the players and the Fed is the coach. It's been a long, successful season so far and when things were at their best (2021) the coach/Fed told his players/banks that even though they were tired and that signs of fatigue were starting to catch up to them (inflation) - this was the time to double down on their aggressive defensive strategy (bonds).
Instead of calling timeouts or substituting players to give them a rest, the coach/Fed continued pushing the pace until some of the support players (smaller banks) collapsed on the court. This put more pressure on the star players (JPM/BofA) to perform despite having odds stacked even higher against them - although they continued to believe the coach/Fed had their back.
At some point, one of the all-stars collapses as well and the coach is out of viable players and must forfeit (default/crisis/etc). The commentators (media) tell the fans (general population) that it's a shame the support players (smaller banks) didn't train hard enough and praise the all-stars (big banks) for picking up the slack as long as they could.
The worst part though? Nobody blames the coach, because nobody wants to question if this was the right strategy to play out. In fact, the coach is then brought back next season to rebuild the team from scratch with some new players they have hand-picked and a new "strategy".
And we do it all over again...
(Even MJ can't carry us through the upcoming banking/fiat crisis)
