I see a lot of unexpected saltiness and clear misconceptions in any thread about SVB.
“Depositors shouldn’t get anything beyond the insured $250,000”. Then what do we do with the billions in remaining assets? Appropriate them, and leave small and mid businesses hanged to dry?
“This is a bailout”. It would be if shareholders were to get their money back, which doesn’t seem likely. The government will use the bank assets to make customers, not owners, whole.
Generic screeching against the tech world. I get the schaudenfreude, but this will not hurt big tech and VCs as much as tens of thousands of small businesses, and the people employed at them. Some billionaires will be upset at some relatively insignificant losses, while hundreds of thousands may lose their jobs.
I'm pretty baffled to see so much of this on HN. Like a whole lot of people here, I've worked at startups for my whole career. People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money because our CEO used a well-reputed bank?
Absolutely wipe out the equityholders of SVB. They deserve nothing, because that's what you should end up with if you own stock in a company that goes bankrupt. Claw back executive pay if that's something you can do. But kill a bunch of startups because of their choice of financial institution? I just don't get where that comes from.
I think the backlash against tech comes from many years of tech celebrating themselves and being celebrated as “disrupters” for a lot of bullshit startups. And the amounts of money made with companies hat have no real business is just astonishing. It would be nice if it went back to focusing on creating sustainable businesses that make useful products that benefit their users and aren’t just another vehicle for mass surveillance.
Plenty of startups fit that bill and will nonetheless be impacted by SVB’s failure, while the most pointless businesses surf by on their founders’ access to inherited wealth and political power. Any revenge on them will be short-lived and will have serious, lasting consequences for middle class workers throughout the industry. For anyone reading this who doesn’t already know: startups aren’t all snotty trust fund kids making $300k+ selling AI deodorant on the blockchain.
As I said on another post this weekend, I’ll remember the comments I’m reading here for the rest of my life.
> Plenty of startups fit that bill and will nonetheless be impacted by SVB’s failure
Startups are going to get most of their deposits back-- perhaps all if there's an acquisition. If SVB is not acquired, I hope the FDIC is able to get a substantial dividend quickly so that they can keep operating and that everyone works to keep disruption low.
But I don't think the federal government needs to make depositors whole beyond the insurance limits. I think that sets its own bad precedent. Maybe some startups are going to lose 5-40% of their cash because of their treasury management choices. That is OK.
The times when I was a founder of a startup with a substantial cash balance--- we hedged the bank risk. There was a cost to it. I don't think those costs should be socialized.
To further this, a lot of people (see Sam Altman, for example[1]) are saying the federal government should give depositors all of their money bank, and don't seem to care at all about what this would mean in the long run. Is the FDIC now insuring all deposits in the U.S. for an unlimited amount? What would the implications of that be?
Maybe there should be changes made to help protect depositors more, but instead of a collected and rational conversation about how we'll treat deposits going forward we're getting glib "just give these people there money back, they don't deserve this" responses. Of course these things are tragedies, but the degree to which the federal government assists people in these situations is a complex discussion, and we have to come up with a consistent approach.
People are asking about salty response, but this kind of cavalier attitude toward the financial system from supposedly serious thought leaders is a bit alarming.
> Maybe the fed should open a bank for deposits that's guaranteed but provides either tbill interest or zero interest.
> It's pretty ridiculous for people to need to judge whether their bank is fiscally sound.
This is a great idea. We should look into this more.
iirc three researchers asked this same question back in 2018.
> A potential policy recommendation was posed in 2018 by three researchers, two of whom worked in the Treasury Department. Under their proposal, the Federal Reserve would offer the option to all individuals and businesses in the United States to open a bank account, termed a “Fed Account,” with the Federal Reserve itself, providing an alternative to private banks or credit unions. Such an option could have significant effects on a wide array of monetary and economic issues.
If you operate in 1% space of wealth there are and should be risks. Making everything the lowest common denominator literally leaves us with Camacho for president.
Why should there be risks? If someone just wants to park some cash without it possibly disappearing, that seems like a solvable problem. E.g. as the parent said, central banks could simply offer accounts to anybody.
> The 250k limit should be inflation adjusted. It’s not been raised since 2008. If inflation adjusted the FDIC insurance would be closer to 350k
That 100k difference wouldn't make any difference here though, since the problem is for businesses (startups mostly) who had accounts there.
The 250K insurance limit seems quite reasonable for individual personal accounts per bank. But applying the same limit to a whole company which may well have more than 250K in payroll per month... well there's a problem.
Yeah, there was a lot of balls to Sam's post, "many of the relevant people in government don't understand the magnitude of this"? Like the FDIC? I think they understand plenty. That's very specifically why they don't communicate with the bank before they take it over, that's why as many people have seen and been impressed with, they come in with almost surgical precision and take things over and work (literally) around the clock, realizing every hour, day counts, and get this stuff sorted.
No Sam, it was people like you who underplayed the magnitude of this, and are now panicking, and looking for a bailout, and are entirely unable to justify why of the several hundred or more banks FDIC has closed (though one of the larger ones), SVB should be special, beyond "well, it's MY money".
> I hope the FDIC is able to get a substantial dividend quickly so that they can keep operating and that everyone works to keep disruption low
The FDIC has publicly said there will be an advance dividend and I don't see why it wouldn't be substantial, given that there's going to be a LOT of recovery unless SVB has big non-public problems.
FDIC has to make a decision about risk. There's no way they have done enough diligence to have a complete picture of liabilities (e.g. to find any non-public problems).
FDIC should pay early (Monday-Tuesday, not anytime "next week" as they've indicated so far) and should pay a big chunk, even though it's not completely safe.
Every day that goes by with uncertainty, the cost of the fear grows.
Why wouldn't there be a way? They're a government corporation with a $2bn budget, thousands of employees, whose only purpose is to oversee this kind of event. And it's not like they've been overwhelmed with work recently. The bankruptcy was only made public Friday, but they've been working on it for longer than that. Yes, they've certainly done their due diligence.
So, legally speaking what authority does the Treasury Department have to make depositors whole beyond the legally guaranteed $250,000 insured and an equal share up to the amount of their deposits of the auctioned and liquidated assets?
The question I have is do some of the proceeds of the liquidation get used for $250,000 insurance payout first? Or do the tax payers get to help?
> The question I have is do some of the proceeds of the liquidation get used for $250,000 insurance payout first?
Yup. FDIC gets the bank, and has to pay the insured amount. Then, the remainder must be managed for the benefit of depositors, other creditors, and shareholders. Any shortfall of the insured amount can be paid from the deposit insurance fund.
> Or do the tax payers get to help?
The FDIC deposit insurance fund is paid for by banks.
I think people have forgotten that depositor bailouts are not just free money, but money taken from other people. There's a balance between minimizing the pain to depositors and minimizing the pain to the rest of society by not only taking money from them, but creating an environment where people don't have to care about where they put their money and thus have no reason to demand the people they trust with their money not act like reckless assholes. Corrupting the entire concept of risk vs reward would destroy us all.
…where does the extra money go then? If a bank has more than the insured deposits still, but is insolvent, where does the rest of it go? To the depositors, is what makes sense to me.
Yes, if the bank isn't acquired then the assets will be liquidated and depositors will receive most of the proceeds. They are relatively senior in a bankruptcy process.
Right, that makes sense to me. So I guess I'm confused by the other commenters suggesting that depositors should only receive the $250,000 and no more. What are they proposing happens to the remaining money?
> I simply don't believe you ever founded a startup.
CTO Recourse Technologies; acquired by Symantec in 2002.
CEO, later VP of Engineering TransLattice; acquired by QualComm 2017.
And a couple of other things inbetween. Now I'm a middle school/high school teacher.
Your assumption of bad faith is terrible.
> A big variable here is simply when and how money market sweep funds will be handled and made available, if you had millions without sweeping into a money market fund, that's silly.
You just use IntraFi and they take care of the details for you. Odds are your bank makes the introduction when you ask the question about the exposure.
> This is one of the dumbest views
Make an argument without calling people dumb.
> If the government can protect against huge losses because of their liquidity, why in the world wouldn't we let them? The bonds SVB held are only mark-to-market losses right now because they haven't matured.
In a discussion elsewhere, the moment I mentioned my opposition to a bailout, the immediate response was, "Sounds like you haven’t run a startup ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". I've started 4 companies, one of them a classic venture-backed thing.
The immediate assumption of "Oh, you people who are not as me and just can't possibly understand tech, so you don't get to have an opinion," is exactly the sort of arrogant exceptionalism that got a lot of people into this jam. Like, I get that it's awful to realize one's business is possibly doomed. I have been there. But in that moment to flail around and blame others rather than understanding the mistake? That's a great way to keep making the same sort of arrogant mistakes.
> is exactly the sort of arrogant exceptionalism that got a lot of people into this jam
Well, I don't think you start a business if you're being entirely rational, either. You basically need an outsized belief in your own capabilities and need to have the erroneous belief that you entirely control your own destiny.
Black swan events that might entirely wipe you out and that are completely out of your control cause cognitive dissonance.
I do think FDIC should choose to incur some amount of risk of being surprised by additional liabilities by making a quick dividend payment. The benefits of keeping things moving and adding some clarity soon outweigh a small risk of partially bailing out losses.
> You're expecting early stage venture backed companies to have treasury expertise? Time to focus and think about that?
You hire a financial manager, in-house or a service. Basic delegation task that any one (individual or business) dealing with more than a million dollars should probably be doing anyways. Certainly anyone dealing with the kind of money we're talking about here with SVB's customers.
Just keep in mind that miserable jerks are naturally more inclined to be noisy. This is showing up on both sides of this debate. There's these miserable jerk VCs noisily demanding tax funded bailouts to preserve some of their wealth that is at risk. And there are the miserable jerks you're talking about on the other side who claim to want to see a bunch of peoples' livelihoods put at risk.
But those people are just a noisy minority. Most people are quietly somewhere else on the continuum between those extremes.
No, but the median salary for a software engineer is still 120k, a little under double the median salary across all industries.
It's hard to dredge up deep, deep wells of sympathy for folks who were already playing the salary game at double the value of half the players. One can't escape the sense that if they've done the kind of budgeting that a regular American does, they will be fine.
Besides the trivially obvious recognition that people other than engineers work at companies (cooks, janitors, HR, etc.), realize also that, for example, Etsy’s sellers may be affected since the account used to pay them was at SVB. Of course, I’m sure someone here will explain that obviously some lady selling bowls in Michigan should have done due diligence on her platform’s bank of choice to make sure that they didn’t have any maturity risk. Anything short of that really just fundamentally represents business incompetence and deserves to be wiped out since Peter Thiel decided to cause a run at the bank two layers removed from her. But that will teach the correct lessons and punish the right people! Clearly Thiel should be rewarded for prudently advising everyone to remove all funds, while janitors and craftspeople on Etsy alike will finally learn the importance of marking to market treasuries.
Actually, for almost all of these companies, cooks, janitors, etc are contracted employees and work for the contracting company, not the startup. The startup retains a contract for services.
This allows them to keep those employees at arm's length and not have to pay the kind of salary and benefits that their "real" employees enjoy. It has also great bonuses in that if the "real" employees want to abuse the snot out of those contractors (including really vile stuff, obvious violations of the equal employment act), the tech company and the contracting company are heavily incentivized to "solve" the problem by removing the contracted employee from the position. Employees in that position, should they want to take action, have to go through multiple layers of red tape and ambiguous responsibility and risk upsetting the apple cart for all of their peers, because the tech company is always at Liberty to cancel the entire contract to avoid a "problem" contractor.
The whole system is a little bit rotten.
And yeah, it sure does suck for folks who are going to get bit as clients of Etsy because Etsy didn't hedge bets. Maybe Etsy learned a lesson.
It really sucks for Etsy’s sellers so maybe… Etsy learned a lesson? Here’s the confused lesson by association argument again. The majority of your argument is around learning lessons, but you momentarily acknowledge that perhaps there are in fact people hurt here who it would be hard to accuse of deserving it due to a lack of due diligence, but you then immediately resolve the cognitive dissonance by reassuring yourself that perhaps that will make the lesson Etsy learns that much stronger.
The majority of your argument revolves around the idea that only rich people in this “rotten system” will be affected, or that this is an important lesson. When it’s pointed out that there are many types of employees who aren’t rich, you say they don’t count because they’re contractors, ignoring that even if true, which I’m not necessarily granting, it still doesn’t matter since that contracting job will still probably disappear and there is a high likelihood that they can’t just be immediately positioned somewhere new. The rich developer may have an easier time landing a new position than the cook getting a new shift from the contracting company somewhere new. But I suppose that’s irrelevant, because the point about cooks being contractors actually had nothing to do with the topic at hand of whether they deserve to be colateral damage. Rather, it was meant to derail the conversation into a long digression about how these contracting agreements further prove how “rotten” these startups are… and thus deserve to learn a lesson about treasury performance.
> It really sucks for Etsy’s sellers so maybe… Etsy learned a lesson?
I hope so. I don't expect the sellers to have done anything different. Corporations, however, have a responsibility to manage their finances effectively. "We weren't smart enough in that space" is no more an excuse than it would be if sellers were having problems because Etsy's web infrastructure broke down due to lack of proper planning for redundancy and fault tolerance.
And I never said nor implied that only rich people will be affected. But they're basically the only ones with power to do anything different here. The rest of us are along for the ride.
Here's the question. Now that this happened, do the rest of us just accept that this is how it works? Because if we do, nothing changes, and we just get to sit back and wait for the whole system to unspool again. Or, we could stop treating the machine in California like it's better than a Vegas slot machine for most players and start building something better.
> I hope so. I don't expect the sellers to have done anything different. Corporations, however, have a responsibility to manage their finances effectively.
Just so I understand correctly, if the seller has an LLC they made through legalzoom.com for their Etsy bowl business (which is very common and highly recommended), then does your sympathy for them immediately evaporate since they now have a “responsibility to manage their finances effectively”? Why exactly is the Etsy seller off the hook in this scenario? Is it a headcount requirement? If the Etsy seller LLC is 3 people (two sisters and their mom), now are they irresponsible for using Etsy? Are all those 3 person startups in YC different somehow? Only in that they make “useless” things and the Etsy people make “useful” things, and that translates to whether a corporation needs to be responsible?
> Here's the question. Now that this happened, do the rest of us just accept that this is how it works? Because if we do, nothing changes, and we just get to sit back and wait for the whole system to unspool again.
Accept that what is how it works? It depends on the solution. If the solution is providing temporary backstops to depositors so that a sale to another private bank can be more attractive, then I don’t think that’s anything earth shattering to accept? Especially considering it would probably result in a private solution happening faster at little to no cost to the taxpayer. If congress empowers the FDIC to claw back SVB share sales to help make depositors whole, I think that’s also not anything that people would have a problem accepting? Like part of the problem here is that completely different parties are lumped together and in this fury the only acceptable answer is “no help!” No one is arguing for SVB to be bailed out. Those shares are going to zero. That is a sufficient market result. Enabling a bunch of assets that still have value to be maximized to avoid the philosophical dilemma of our Etsy seller doesn’t seem to be the “end all” nightmare scenario it’s being chalked up to be here. If anything, maybe the focus should be on plummeting interest rates to zero making precisely the kinds of “full liquidity paid for checking accounts” become an endangered species in the first place. Or maybe then raising rates at break neck speed despite having questionable results on the inflation they’re targeting, while clearly affecting random pieces of the economy.
> Or, we could stop treating the machine in California like it's better than a Vegas slot machine for most players and start building something better.
It seems like choosing a random 30% of Silicon Valley companies to put in hard mode is a close approximation to the Vegas slot machine than fad imitating zero interest checking accounts that were in no way high risk irresponsible investments that had the chance to wildly benefit the depositors if the bet would have “paid off” vs. if it crashed to zero. Especially given the high likelihood that there are sufficient assets to make depositors either whole or almost whole, it seems even more the case that those disproportionately affected will be workers, and not companies. Not to even mention the fact that those most responsible (Thiel) aren’t going to suffer, nor are the mega tech companies that can easily survive this, and may even end up just absorbing some of these companies and consolidating even more.
I am super curious as to what “something better” looks like though. Because right now, the world 6 months from now where a random subsection of tech and wine workers had their year ruined, while big tech companies and VCs are still doing just fine, doesn’t exactly seem like fertile ground for whatever amazing new system you have dreamed up.
Headcount and age. Etsy is a +1,000 employee company that's been around over a decade. Practically bedrock by Valley standards. I personally draw the line between "small" and "big enough to know better" at 100+ employees (around where the EEOC draws the line for mandatory reporting). I acknowledge people may disagree on this topic; that's where my line happens to be.
FWIW, I don't disagree on the mechanics of your suggestion for back-stopping SVB enough for most folks to be made whole. I'm more concerned about the mechanisms that led to one bank becoming such a linchpin for the whole system. We should have learned about "too big to fail" already.
> It seems like choosing a random 30% of Silicon Valley companies to put in hard mode is a close approximation to the Vegas slot machine.
Yes... That's what SV just did to its ecosystem due to over-reliance on one bad bank because "optimization is king" is the mantra of the whole machine. For us to not find ourselves in this boat again in 20 years, the people with money power in SV need to un-learn the lesson that's been driving SV for decades. Someone needs to be less-than-optimal for the system to not be so fragile.
> Headcount and age. Etsy is a +1,000 employee company that's been around over a decade. Practically bedrock by Valley standards. I personally draw the line between "small" and "big enough to know better" at 100+ employees (around where the EEOC draws the line for mandatory reporting). I acknowledge people may disagree on this topic; that's where my line happens to be.
To be clear, Etsy is not my concern here. They will probably survive just fine regardless of whether we deem them to be responsible or not. That's part of the point. The sole question was the sellers, and trying to examine why they inspire more sympathy to similar-sized companies that may be directly banking with SVB. Hence my question of whether the mere existence of a legal entity is the difference, given that in fact many Etsy sellers do of course have simple LLCs set up. I would fine "Hey, Etsy sellers need to look into Etsy's bank to be responsible too" consistent with "3 person YC companies need to be responsible about the bank they choose", or acknowledging that's a tall order for both. But not one and not the other, was my only point here.
> Yes... That's what SV just did to its ecosystem due to over-reliance on one bad bank because "optimization is king" is the mantra of the whole machine.
If it puts your mind at ease, I think the result is going to be the same regardless of what happens to depositors: everyone now will try to spread out their money and sweeps will become part of startups 101, etc. In that sense, the system has worked: the irresponsible bankers are being punished, they and their investors lost their bank. I promise no one is going to wake up and say "well, glad that got magically solved" and not be super paranoid going forward. If anything, if depositors aren't made whole, this particular demographic is more likely to, to your point, over-optimize in that direction (perhaps create investment vehicles to short regional banks or something, who knows).
> The majority of your argument revolves around the idea that only rich people in this “rotten system” will be affected, or that this is an important lesson.
I think the main issue is that the status quo is that more often than not such classes never learn any lessons, so people are cheering on any hurt they receive, no matter who else gets in the way. Discontent is such a state that people are becoming, as they say, Jokerfied.
That's not the situation here. Etsy holds seller payments in SVB in an account, that yes of course, is probably above the FDIC 250K limit since it represents the amount to be paid out to hundres if not thousands of sellers: https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/business/etsy-warns-sellers...
Without derailing the discussion into whether Etsy "should have known better" (which to be clear is an argument that would be made in a simplified vacuum given the complexity of them probably just being an intermediary between a credit card processor and the sellers and thus it being fairly logistically complicated to set up that intermediary as some sort of multi-bank-account system or whatever), but regardless, even if that is the worst way to do it in the world, the point is that that's not the individual sellers' fault, and they shouldn't be punished for it. Again, as I mentioned in my comment, the position that "Well individual Etsy sellers should really do a financial analysis on the host platform's bank, quarterly, to account for interest rate changes, and if they independently conclude that that bank is unhealthy, they should pull their store off Etsy and... ???" is a bit hard to swallow, and I'm not sure if a world we really want to create.
> It's hard to dredge up deep, deep wells of sympathy
This, by the way, is why ordinary Americans are suffering while the billionaires are winning and laughing at us. They have us fighting with each other for scraps. $120k/yr after taxes doesn't go very far at all for a family of four. Kids eat a lot of food! Sure, it goes roughly twice as far as $60k/yr does, and, saved wisely and not spent on yachts, cocaine, and girls, provides a bit more of a financial cushion in case of a calamity like the one we're in, but SVB's CEO made $4.8 million last year, which, budgeted by a regular American, is enough for several lifetimes. A software dev making $120k/yr, he is not.
Have however much sympathy you can muster for software developers who, yes, have more than you do, but don't lose sight of the bigger picture.
We could break the system if we wanted to. Were software engineers to unionize alongside the contracted employees, it would provide a front that would make it basically impossible to operate startups without dealing more fairly. You can't run a business that has a building without someone collecting the trash, sweeping the floors, and keeping the whole thing from falling down. Worst-case scenario, fouhders decide to try and operate with-from-home employee teams to decrease contractors needed, and then the engineers win anyway.
... It won't happen because we don't want it to. But it could.
Especially for the startup end of things, where we are aiming to disrupt other businesses.
Should we have a strong safety net, so that people who lose their jobs due to market disruptions or executive mismanagement do not suffer? Absolutely. And if it's currently inadequate, by all means let's improve it.
But I think it's wrong to try to protect jobs through government subsidies to industries where execs made bad choices. Which is exactly what a lot of people are apparently asking for when they're asking for depositors to get retroactive free deposit insurance here.
We can absolutely be a society in which checking accounts are a pit of snakes which must be navigated by executive savvy and wit. It’s just going to be a much poorer one. The point is not to “protect jobs in Silicon Valley” per se, it is to maintain banking infrastructure as the sort of thing that just works (or gets urgently fixed) so that the entire economy can continue to rely on it, vs. entering a lower-trust regime where a checking account may as well be a stock portfolio.
The FDIC already exists to make sure checking accounts aren't a pit of snakes for 99% of the population. The entire economy can continue to rely on it just as it always has.
Does this mean that rich people have to be more careful managing gobs of cash? Yes, but that has always been the case. Treasury management is a thing that exists both as a thing people do professionally and as a service you can buy.
I understand that some people are young enough that they have either not heard about bank failures or did not feel like it applied to them due to being in a period that was very good for banks. But they are and they do: https://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/bank/
You mean, personal savers and very small businesses can continue to rely on the banking system. That’s not 99% of the economy.
Young people hear plenty about bank failures - specifically as a success story for big government, a problem we solved, such that depositors are secure these days.
I recognize that startups are in a bit of a weird place where they might have a lot of money to manage before they are sophisticated enough to have a big finance team. If only there were some sort of entity specialized in dealing with their unique needs… oh wait.
Yes, that's why I said "99% of the population", not "99% of the economy".
But the economy's also going to be fine here. Most businesses with a lot of money understand that bank failure risk is just one of the many financial risks to manage. To the extent a startup wants to have millions of dollars but not hire somebody competent to manage that money, them's the breaks.
The same thing would be true for startups that don't take security seriously, for example. I feel bad for the founders here, but no worse than I would for one who experienced hackers getting in and stealing the data. Even if they had hired "sort of entity specialized in dealing with their" security needs. Picking a bad vendor happens, and if you bet your company on a vendor choice in a vital area, well, sometimes those bets don't come out like you hoped.
> Most businesses with a lot of money understand that bank failure risk is just one of the many financial risks to manage.
This is a poorer world than the one where it’s not, is my point.
What are you even supposed to do here, open accounts at 40 different banks when you get a $10 million check? That’s pointless silliness. Is this really what we want entrepreneurs to be spending their time on?
Oh no! A person with $10m in cash might have to put forth a little effort to take care of a vast amount of money! Such horrors have rarely been contemplated.
I understand that some see startup founders as delicate smol beans who are too uwu soft to have to actually do some work. But I have been told repeatedly that these people are genius future titans of industry, backed by the most financially savvy people on the planet. So I think maybe they can handle it?
If somebody is in the incredibly privileged position of being handed $10m in one go, but is also uninterested in managing the money, then I would expect them to hire a part-time CFO. Or at the very least to split the money up and put it into two different banks, which in this case would have resulted in no payroll disruption and the safety of 90-100% of their money.
I feel like you're conflating "a person" with businesses, who have a number of people downstream of their bank accounts. They really aren't very similar to wealthy individuals with large bank accounts.
Having said that, as I've been reading about this for the first time over the past couple days, I have become a bit less sympathetic to companies with very large deposits at a single bank. It does seem that there are mechanisms, like "insured cash sweep", that good financial officers should have been taking advantage of. But I still have uncertainty about this and want to read more about it.
But I think the general point of the other commenter in this thread is a good one: a company with, say $2M to $10M in cash deposits should ideally be able to access banking services easily and with negligible risk. This is not an enormous business size! It's better for society for it to be possible to run businesses like that without having to fear big surprises in the financial system killing you on a random Friday.
The "person" here is the founding CEO with a $10m check I was being asked to have empathy for. To the extent that we are instead talking about proper businesses, you have a point, but I have a different response. A real business that just keeps $10m in cash sitting around in one spot like some teen's first checking account is grossly lacking in treasury management.
> should ideally
Sure. Ideally, we should all live in the Big Rock Candy Mountains. [1] But back here in reality, companies have to manage all sorts of risks. If they don't want to hire a professional finance person and don't want to avail themselves of services that solve their problems, then that is a choice they can make. It's just not the taxpayer's job to kiss their boo-boos and make it all better when their gamble doesn't turn out so well.
It is totally possible to have an economy and public policy based on seething contempt for entrepreneurs. It's probably the case that a majority of voters would prefer to be a little worse off as long as the tech-bros they hate are a lot worse off. I just think this is an ugly, self-defeating basis on which to run a society.
>which in this case would have resulted in no payroll disruption and the safety of 90-100% of their money.
Why would it have resulted in that? We've already established that any amount above $250k in one bank may as as well be vaporized already, you just don't know it yet.
I am an entrepreneur from a family of entrepreneurs. I have started multiple companies, one of which was venture backed. I like entrepreneurs just fine, so peddle that nonsense elsewhere.
> Why would it have resulted in that?
Because our modern regulatory regime is pretty good.
If you have your money in two bank accounts and have reasonable capital reserves, you'll be able to make payroll from one of them. So the short-term problem is solved. In your example, you've got $5m to work with.
The expectations I'm seeing for that are on the order of 50%. So a week later, you're back up to $7.75 million to work with, with more to come in as assets are sold. Maybe you get everything back, maybe you take a haircut. The estimates I'm seeing are in the 0-20% range, so you end up with $9-10 million back over time.
And that's just the FDIC. Functioning businesses have income that they can use to pay salaries or as justification for loans or selling equity. They can also pursue acquisition by somebody who was lucky or smart enough not to have high egg/basket ratios.
So in the end, maybe we end up with a few failed companies, but it's not a systemic risk, and it's the sort of object lesson that helps people understand why they need to take cash management seriously beyond a certain level. That surely will suck for some people, but that's how capitalism works.
It is possible that it'll make some kind of realpolitik sense to stabilize the startup scene, but I sort of doubt it. During the housing crisis, the federal government bought up sufficient stock to stabilize American auto manufacturing not because they particularly cared about the jobs that would be lost or the ecosystem of supporting industries that would be damaged as a result of loss of major manufacturing, but because auto manufacturing is one of America's national security concerns... The factories and skill sets that create trucks can create APCs, jeeps, and tanks if a hot war breaks out.
I'm not exactly sure off the top of my head what the similar defense necessity story is for Silicon Valley.
Are you for real? There is an AI arms race with China, for one. There is critical innovation across all segments happening in Silicon Valley, including defense.
That would be a good argument for bailing out a Raytheon or a Microsoft, companies that have a record of success in delivering on complicated software technologies, but not the average Silicon Valley startup.
Framed another way, we're asking for the government to take some ownership of their stewardship of banks. The Treasury, the Fed, the CA gov, and the ratings agencies all gave svb passing grades. svb appears not to have done crypto speculation.
The svb ceo asked congress to weaken Dodd-Frank. If that's a bad idea, then congress should say no; that's their job.
Apparently banking over trivial amounts of money ($250k isn't even one month's cash use -- ie payroll and health insurance -- for a 15-ish person sfbay company) requiring significant work to make that cash unlikely to just disappear is no way to run a country.
The cash was always unlikely to disappear. It's just that even unlikely things happen sometimes.
If doing decent treasury management is too darned hard for rich people to do, I don't think that's a problem for the government to manage. Beyond the obvious expedient of using two or three banks, which would have solved most problems for most companies here, there are a number of obvious market-driven solutions. E.g., https://www.difxs.com/ or https://www.g2.com/categories/treasury-management
Yeah, this is some ideologically driven smearing of people who are literally like I want to stick my seed round in a checking account and not have that disappear. For what it's worth, I'm not rich; I'm like a hundred-thousandaire. (And not affected, though friends are.)
Disappointing to see someone like you gloating that a bank screwed a bunch of small business customers. From reading your writing, I doubt you'd cosign "basic economic services like a checking account are use at your own risk" in almost any other area.
Ah yes, my crazy ideology of "people should generally experience the consequences of their actions, especially when they're doing very well".
I get that you want to be able to be handed millions of dollars and have somebody else take care of that for you. Who doesn't want that? I just don't understand why you think it's the job of poorer people to subsidize you if you take a risk with those millions and it doesn't pan out.
> "basic economic services like a checking account are use at your own risk"
I in fact don't cosign that; I've been very clear that I support mandatory FDIC insurance with its current very generous limit. I also support the FDIC's resolution process where they immediately pay out the $250k and then work hard to quickly pay a large portion of the remainder. That's a giant level of risk reduction.
But if somebody is rich enough that they have millions in cash and haven't bothered to take basic precautions like "use two banks", I don't think that's a problem such that (much poorer) taxpayers should be obliged to make it all better. If it happened to a friend I would feel bad for them personally, of course. But not so much that I would be calling for a government bailout. Capitalism works because risks yield both gains and losses. People who don't like that should manage their risks.
Taxpayers are not on the hook for any deposit losses here. From the statement: “No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.”
You know that not only startups use SVB right? Farmers and wineries do as well. And either way this is the economic engine of America - in its accounts lays the next trillions of dollars of GDP. It is unbelievably stupid to not find a way to make them whole for a black swan event.
Let's say a small farm or winery employees 20 employees and pays them an average of $50k a year. Holding three months of payroll alone will be over the FDIC limit, let alone other money they'll need to buffer all of their other expenses.
I have two good friends who own and run wineries in France. Both of them are relatively successful, but neither of them have anywhere near 20 employees, for the simple reason that they can't afford to. The majority of the work is done by family members.
There's always the option to release founder equity in exchange for more investment. If the startups were viable before, they're most likely still viable now.
Already picked up some great deals and next week is booked dense.
Nailed it. If people get whatever short term vengeance they're looking for, the contagion will cause a whole lot of collateral damage to people who aren't in tech.
If you're claiming that startups are so systemically important that they need special protection, then you are also saying that they are so systemically dangerous that they need much more aggressive regulation.
If you're a small or medium sized business and you just saw SVB evaporate and depositors take a substantial haircut, why wouldn't you open up an account at JPM on Monday and never again bank at a regional bank of SVB's size?
SVB was undone by a bank run, not because they were doing anything particularly risky. Something like 1/4 or 1/3 of all their deposits tried to exit on Thursday - no bank can survive that given how fractional reserve banking works.
If you are a small business who has way more than $250k but only has time to manage one bank account and lack the need for more sophisticated treasury management, then yes, I would absolutely say you should put it in the least risky bank. Or you could take the wild step of not putting all your eggs in one basket.
The bank run was the proximate cause of the failure, but they also made some big bets and lost, making them vulnerable to the bank run in the first place.
The end point of every business doing “treasury management” to keep all their accounts under 250k is that the FDIC ends up insuring all the money anyway. The only difference is lot more of it goes to fees for money managers and banks, and starting/running a business is a lot more complicated.
What’s the point? Either set a limit that can’t be skirted by maintaining multiple accounts or guarantee the same amount in a single account.
It’s one component of it, clearly. That’s pretty much what IntraFi does—while they don’t open an account with every bank, they have thousands of banks in their network and claim to be able to maintain FDIC insurance for up to 160 million.
If FDIC wants it to be possible to insure that much, they should cut out the middlemen and financial engineering requirements and just insure deposits of every business to that amount. If they don’t want to insure that much, then IntraFi and other similar services should be illegal.
> If they don’t want to insure that much, then IntraFi and other similar services should be illegal.
Why though? The "$250k per bank" rule is clearly a feature of the system, not a bug. If the FDIC wanted to have the insurance limit be across all banks, that's how they would've structured the rule.
But they didn't, because their purpose wasn't to provide unlimited protections to corporations from bank failure, it was to limit the impact of any individual bank's failures and decrease the likelihood of bank runs.
The current rule does this effectively, and encourages larger businesses to diversify their assets while also providing significant downside protection to many individuals and small businesses.
> If FDIC wants it to be possible to insure that much
FDIC doesn’t want to insure that much against a single bank failure. Encouraging diversification of large balances helps the FDIC’s goals, since it reduces the impact of single bank failures and reduces the possibility of single failures turning into broader economic collapses without increasing the cost to the Treasury of a single bank failure, which is an efficient way of promoting the purpose for which the FDIC exists.
If the deposits are insured, a bank failure is far less likely in the first place.
It might be efficient for the FDIC to require complex and expensive financial engineering just to keep operating capital safe, but it's hostile to businesses, especially small ones, and is out of reach for many.
> It might be efficient for the FDIC to require complex and expensive financial engineering just to keep operating capital safe, but it’s hostile to businesses
The FDIC exists to protect against a general collapse of banking like the one that preceded the Great Depression, not as a generalized subsidy to business.
Nope. The FDIC's main concern is with individual bank failure. If people spread their money out among many banks, then they have lowered both their risk and the FDIC's risk.
If you'd like to argue that the FDIC should go further so as not to subsidize people with shit-tons of cash, I'm certainly open to that. But the increased regulatory complexity might not be worth the total risk reduction, so I'd want to see some math. I suspect it's mainly a red herring, though, as I couldn't find any sign that Intrafi is a particularly large business.
Yes and now think about the implication of all the SMBs flowing their cash out of their regional banks all at once. And if you have anything more than a few employees, you definitely have an account over $250k because that's still an incredibly small business.
I understand you have a fear of contagion risk, but I don't see many signs of it. I think this mainly happened because SVB had a depositor base where a big chunk was tightly knit and prone to herd-like behavior. Most companies just aren't a) in the red, b) letting millions in cash sit around, and c) lacking in treasuring management capacity.
But if there are a ton of regional banks who took advantage of laxer regulation and had balance sheets in as poor a shape as SVB, then I am fine with some of them failing too. It won't be anywhere near the problem that 2008 or the S&L crisis was, and we'll end up with tighter regulation for those banks next time around.
You don’t see any risk of contagion? We have a fractional reserve banking system. If even a small percentage of depositors try to withdraw all at once, that can bring down any bank.
Right now, everyone in the country with uninsured accounts is being incentivized to pull those deposits and pull them fast. We don’t know how things will turn out, but there is obviously a major risk of contagion.
As with the other person, I understand that's a thing you're imagining. I'm just not seeing much evidence for it. It is a possibility? Sure. But not one I see as a major risk. And from what financial regulators are saying, I don't think they see it that way either.
You're not seeing it because banks are generally closed over the weekend. This is like sitting in the eye of the hurricane and saying that everything is fine because it's not windy yet.
For the third time, I understand people have this belief. But restating a belief without adding evidence doesn't convince me you're right. If anything, it's the opposite.
We could be in the eye of a hurricane. Or we could be in any of the non-hurricane locations on the planet. I think the latter is more likely.
Now that we know a second bank is being taken over, yes, a verdict is in. But I think that says more about having a second failure than the situation we were discussing.
I would argue that holding long duration treasuries in a rising rate environment and capitalizing before marking to market are two very risky ways to run a bank.
> I would argue that holding long duration treasuries in a rising rate environment and capitalizing before marking to market are two very risky ways to run a bank.
Not to mention doing so when you know that most of your customers' businesses are incredibly sensitive to interest rate hikes, in part because you have explicitly marketed to that market for years.
That's a very odd way of stating "here's a sector that will be badly hurt if the contents of their checking accounts disappear with an unknown timeline and percentage recovered."
By that rubric, you could perfectly well claim that your accountant, laundromat, and lawn care companies are systematically important, because they'd fire their employees if their checking accounts disappeared.
Sure, so I'm saying those things are not systemically vital such that they should be exempt from the consequences of their market choices.
You're the one claiming there will be contagion here. I don't think that's the case. If a bunch of unprofitable companies with bad treasury management go under, I think the rest of the economy will be fine. Companies go out of business every day.
If you are claiming that tech is somehow special such that contagion will harm the wider economy, as was the case with mortgage-backed securities in 2008, then any taxpayer-funded bailout should be a one-time deal that goes along with enough regulation so that contagion is no longer a risk in the future.
The issue is whether checking accounts at chartered banks are “market choices” for which there should be “consequences.” The banking system is so regulated because when we lived in that world, it was a bad time, and collective action to make banks reliable was in everyone’s interest. If we are back to “stupid depositors deserve what they get” then what exactly is bank regulation for?
Bank regulation's job is not to create a magic world of unicorns and rainbows. It's to a) keep regular folks from losing their shirts due to the shenanigans of the rich, and b) to prevent systemic risk that could harm the wider economy.
Banks make money through risk. Sometimes those risks work out and people make money. Sometimes those risks don't work out and banks fail. This is capitalism 101, and to the extent banks are capitalist enterprises, there's no way around it. Government's job here is just to limit the damage.
If you want banks to be perfectly safe, then you are arguing for government-chartered, not-for-profit, non-capitalist banks. These are things that exist, but we don't have them here in the US. We could, if you really want people with millions in cash to have someplace perfectly safe to park their money, you can certainly argue for their creation.
No, you explicitly used the word contagion: "If people get whatever short term vengeance they're looking for, the contagion will cause a whole lot of collateral damage to people who aren't in tech."
In which case, since you're not claiming contagion risk, I return to my previous point that there is no reason for taxpayers to bail out rich people who took a gamble and lost.
What contagion? How is this going to spread to the rest of the US that isn't actually dependent upon any of these startups or this bank? No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy.
SVB was the sixteenth largest bank in the US. When businesses see that their money isn't safe in the sixteenth largest bank, they're going to cause bank runs on all the smaller banks as they attempt to move all of their money to the top three or four.
> No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy.
That doesn't matter in the slightest. Companies don't do deep evaluations of the financial risks of their banks (as clearly evidenced by what's happening right now). They'll flee from what they perceive as unsafe into what they perceive as safe, regardless of balance sheet realities.
> they're going to cause bank runs on all the smaller banks as they attempt to move all of their money to the top three or four.
One of the primary issues being discussed is the insured limits at banks, and the uncertainty on whether depositors can be made "whole" (it's unclear whether people saying that mean 100% or something close to 100%, so I'm putting it in quotes, some people are being really loose with their terms in this thread). Why the fuck would people, given that context, ever move "all of their money" to only the biggest 3 or 4 institutions and increase their risk by consolidating in exactly the same way that caused the current problems? If anything this is a potential boon for the many smaller banks as they can gain additional depositors as people wise up to their risk exposure.
I can see the logic of that, "Let's act irrationally together and force the government to bail us out next time we make a run on our own bank." Or they can act rationally, distribute (manually or through existing methods) their cash across multiple banks so that their risk exposure is lower and they don't have to depend on the government maybe, possibly, bailing them out. You know, the thing they'd have done if they'd hired financial managers in the first place (which obviously they didn't, or they hired incompetent ones).
I'm not saying they should act in the majority's interest, I'm saying they should act in their own interest. Mitigate their risk by managing their capital properly instead of hoping ("Hope is a poor substitute for strategy") that things will work out. It's irrational to act in a way that, if a failure occurs, requires someone else to bail you out when they aren't legally or ethically required to bail you out. That's operating on hope, not strategy.
I don't think that's likely. Most banks have about half of their deposits FDIC insured because their depositors have low balances. SVB only had 3%. Most banks are unlikely targets for a bank run as a result.
The top four banks are too big to fail and WILL be rescued, as happened in 2008. Bank of America or Citi failing would be the end of America as we know it. That's why everyone will move to the bigger banks. Which is obviously not what we want. But it's what will happen if you leave depositers out to dry because it's a smaller bank.
People saying that depositors need to be ratfucked reminds me of a guy writing about living through the great depression. First he knew about it was one morning when his dad showed his mom the paper with a headline about the stock market crashing. And saying 'good that'll teach those guys'. Six months later his dads tailor shop went under and his dad never had stable employment after that.
that's a lie. and if there is contagion it won't be stemmed by bailing you as a depositor out, we will need that money elsewhere to shore up the system. good luck to you
Simply put, I think this kind of attitude is based in economic resentment. There's a whole part of the US that hasn't seen much benefit from the unbelievably successful startup world.
I remember when people used to go build something useful themselves instead of complaining about the success of others. Why don't we try to get back to that kind of culture?
It's more than not seeing a benefit, there's many parts of the US where people rightly or wrongly blame tech salaries plus remote work for pricing them out of being able to afford a home and other basic life necessities. Of course the situation is more nuanced than that in reality but tech workers have a tendency to show up in once reasonably priced areas, buy up houses for cash and drive around in fancy luxury cars, which doesn't help the perception.
There's also a perception that much of this money is coming via proximity to wealthy financiers and 15 years of ZIRP rather than true hard work.
GP's point was that they have no conception of that, so it affects how they think about things, and their proposed solutions. The fact that the situation they have no conception of happens frequently, even near them, means that their proposed solutions are likely to be inapplicable.
I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat?
> But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own.
You can choose to hold money in multiple banks. There are services that will happily set up laddered CDs across many institutions for you to diversify exposure and maximize insurance.
To use your tortured analogy: if my neighbor's house burned down, and he didn't buy fire insurance... I would be sad, but I don't exactly think it's my problem (or the government's) to pay to make him whole.
> If startups were going under because it turns out that they were pointless and there was no market, and they ran out of runway… then sure.
I know we all like to believe we control our own destiny. Tiny little inconsequential-seeming choices wobble startups between success and failure every single day. Having a good product is such a tiny piece of it all.
I keep seeing this and I’m sorry, it’s just silly. My 12-person startup gets a $10M series A and my first priority should be to find 40 banks to put it in? CDs don’t work — my job is to spend that money in the next 18-24 months, not save it.
Edit: And the people saying the “CFO” should have done better…at that point, one person is probably still founder, CTO, CHRO, CFO, snack buyer, and janitor combined (been there).
> My 12-person startup gets a $10M series A and my first priority should be to find 40 banks to put it in? CDs don’t work — my job is to spend that money in the next 18-24 months, not save it.
You just ask your bank to place the money using IntraFi. You can get a little more interest by locking up some of the money on a 9-12mo ladder, which makes sense if you have 18 mos of runway.
If you have an unanticipated expense or opportunity and need to spend some early, it's a small penalty to get the money out-- usually 6 months of interest, so as long as the probability of having to spend a bunch more is low you're ahead.
Venture capitalists provide banking advice to the companies they fund, and this isn't on the list of things most mention. Now we're reminded why it's a best practice.
I think it's hubris to think that you can have tens of millions of dollars and can ignore vital things with it (account security, systemic risk from counterparties, etc).
> My 12-person startup gets a $10M series A and my first priority should be to find 40 banks to put it in?
Your first priority should be to assure the safety of wherever you put it. Whether that is diversification to the point where all the funds are insured or inquiry into the finances of the institution where you plan on putting all the eggs, or a mixture of lesser diversification and diligence, it should be done.
> my job is to spend that money in the next 18-24 months, not save it.
Well, your first job is to make sure that money is still there when you need to spend it, otherwise, you aren’t going to be spending it.
Remove the single point of failure in having one bank. Put the money not needed for day-to-day operations into short-term liquid government-based financial instruments like t-bills.
If you still think the risk is too high, pay the premium for CDARs or insurance.
It is not about removing all risks. It is about making it acceptable. If your primary bank fails, you can manage it like any other strategic business risk.
The risk of a top 20 bank failure is small compared to the myriad other existential risks being managed by a new startup. We still don’t know if this new failure will even result in depositor losses (though for some reason HN is full of people who seem to want them). I looked at the FDIC database and it seems depositor losses are quite rare.
It would be great if VCs would provide simple cash management services to their fledgling investments, though.
Exactly, I do not want anyone to lose money, but the government should not step in and cover the haircut that may or may not happen. The insured limits are plastered all over the account when you open them. If you find them unacceptable, then solve the risk they impose.
Thus, an easy prudent solution is to have a second bank, likely a "too big to fail bank", with emergency funds to cover the day-to-day until you can roll over to money locked into time-based investments or the system has worked its course on the first bank.
In my personal finances, I have done that in housing deals going above the insured limit by immediately moving money into government-based financial instruments. Then as appropriate, I transferred that to my preferred investments and risk profile. If I, as a layman doing a once-in-a-decade housing deal, can manage it, then a startup can.
> It would be great if VCs would provide simple cash management services to their fledgling investments, though.
It was dirt simple to just use IntraFi. You just say you want it, and sign the form. If you want a little more interest income, you do some cash flow planning and check the box for laddering.
You do have to know it exists, though. Remember the CFO at this hypothetical startup is probably really good at Python, not treasury management. And later on if you need something like a revolving AR credit line, you can’t use your IntraFi balance to collateraize that.
OK, but one of the whole points of why you take venture money is to leverage experience and best practices. Our VCs introduced our bankers and suggested things we should do.
"Find 40 banks" Sadly, that's your job now. Alternatively, I could imagine more VCs from now on will stop giving out the whole round in one wire. They'll start wiring money only in small traunches. You'll legally have claim to the whole $10M, but will be moving to a "just in time" system so you can make payroll. Or we could raise FDIC limit, but politically, that sounds untenable right now.
Which is what's being done. Insured amount going out on Monday, dividends based on liquidation of assets going out over time. The fire is being managed, it's not like nothing is happening here. People are just pissed that the government and FDIC are doing what they've said they would do instead of something more, which was never promised.
People are worried about what this means for confidence in regional banks.
The prudent thing to do right now is to pull your money out of your regional bank and move it to a GSIB and call it a day. This endangers regional banks and concentrates deposits into the large players.
You can stand your moral ground here or you can risk a string of bank runs and systemic collapse. It might not even make a difference anyways with how slow we’ve been to act.
On the flipside, moral hazard is a real problem too. Setting the precedent that your regional bank can do whatever and you'll be just fine isn't great, either.
Yup. The federal government should get a dividend out beyond insurance ASAP if the bank is not acquired. They say "next week", but it should really be Monday or Tuesday.
And it's OK even to incur a little bit of risk/uncertainty when doing so.
But this is different from bailing out all the depositors 100%.
Yup, and presumably they're a lot less worried. :)
If you use multiple banks, you have a higher risk of experiencing a bank failure, but it has less of a consequence on your operations, liquidity, and viability if it should happen.
Here, it's more like losing access to the amount of that is above $250k for some time, and maybe losing 5-40% of that amount forever. So, (0.1 * x - 250000) * 0.4.
So if you use IntraFi to place across 10 banks, and you have $10M, maybe you lose $300k.
It is a risk... but there's plenty of ways to lose a few percent of your working capital that are out of your control.
If you want to further reduce the risk, you could do additional things (e.g. buy some T-bills).
Making bad treasury management decisions is not "no fault of their own". If people want to make the case for a taxpayer bailout, they should start with something like, "Look, we know we fucked up by [not paying attention to something important|taking a risk we thought we could get away with|getting high on our own supply], but we're humbly asking for help."
If somebody's house catches fire because they cheaped out on the furnace and the didn't get homeowner's insurance, I'm going to feel bad for them. They have some Kubler-Ross time ahead for sure. But unless they're family, I'm not taking them in.
> But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own.
Inquiry into bank finances, diversification across banks, etc., are all available options. Maintaining large uninsured balances at a single bank without doing those things (or doing the first, but not taking appropriate actions thereafter) is a choice.
I am not opposed to reasonable government action to mitigate ripple-effect harms given the externalities, but the idea that the startups involved have no responsibility here is misguided.
If only we could centralize the investigation of bank finances and judgement of whether they are healthy enough to use into some sort of agency, staffed by domain experts, with the power to demand relevant documents and shut down unhealthy banks. Nah, that would never work, let's just make it the depositors' responsibility.
It's more a demonstration that their house was always built on other people's largesse, and at the whim of those who hold the real power in the system (the money to invest) their opportunities can evaporate. A bank run doesn't happen without individuals deciding to go bearish and concluding that their own big-money dreams are really worth more than whether strangers they haven't met get a paycheck tomorrow. Something we've seen a lot of as of late it seems.
Maybe building an entire society on a drastically slanted gap between the wealthiest and the least wealthy is actually super unstable and prone to failure?
> I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat?
Absolutely. What's surprising to me is the absolute lack of that nuance on HN. It's all just BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND over the last few days.
Yes. We're absolutely not interested in seeing the US government bail out banks yet again, especially not banks that just happened to get fucked by their "safe investment strategy". I really have no idea why you are surprised.
But what you're saying here is unrelated to the reality of the situation. Yellen has already said there will be no bailout of the bank. A bailout would be something that rescues equity holders. What people are talking about here is making sure depositors don't lose their money.
Yes, but plenty of people are calling for going beyond that.
And it's not clear to me that other banks would be excited to pay higher insurance premiums to bail out Silicon Valley Bank's customers here. If you see something otherwise, please let me know.
I don't see "depositors" as a special class of people at all. They're equivalent to shareholders to me. They all poured money in and expected dividends.
The true reality of the situation is that these people lent their money to the bank. To bail them out is equivalent to bailing out shareholders.
Depositors don’t put money in a bank expecting profits!! Yes they might get interest, but the main goal is safe storage of easily accessible money. Where exactly do you expect people to put money if not a bank?! And do you really expect, and want to live in a world where there is such an expectation (due to unreliable financial institutions), the average startup founder to spend time hedging bank risk?
Not to mention that depositors can get their money back without taxpayer money being used. That’s the whole point of the FDIC stepping in. SVB’s assets have value and can be used to give money back; if another bank buys SVB, odds are depositors will get the vast majority of their money back. It’s not a bailout if the government is not spending money and I don’t know why even a positive, non-bailout outcome seems to be viewed unfavorably.
> the main goal is safe storage of easily accessible money
Absolute bullshit. If that was the goal, banks would be 100% solvent at all times. Every single dollar people ever deposited in the bank would be sitting there in the bank's safe.
That's NOT what happens in practice. Banks simply cannot bear to watch a huge pile of money just sitting there safely doing nothing. So they do fractional reserve banking. People deposit 100 dollars at the bank, the bank stores like 10 dollars only and then loans out 90 dollars to anyone in need of cash. Then the bank literally lies to people's faces when they provide a statement saying they have $100 in their "account" when in fact they only have 10 dollars with $90 being tied up in outstanding liabilities and therefore exposing them to risk.
Anyone who "deposits" money at a bank without expecting profits in return has been fooled twice. Thrice if they tolerate "administrative fees" for the "service".
> And do you really expect, and want to live in a world where there is such an expectation (due to unreliable financial institutions), the average startup founder to spend time hedging bank risk?
I understand the mechanism that occurs in reality, but also in practice the average person puts money in the bank primarily for storage. If you ask someone why they have a bank account, odds are the answer is not “to make money”. They do it because it’s commonly held financial advice that this is better than putting cash in a box under their mattress (not just for returns, but for safety and ease of access). It is not fair to lump these people in with shareholders, in terms of profit expectation, and say they have just as little right to their money back.
But perhaps this is a learning opportunity for me. I’m sure you have a stash of money somewhere for paying bills; obviously you need relatively quick access to this stash. You probably also have a larger stash as an emergency fund, which doesn’t need to be as immediately accessible but still needs relatively quick access (so a CD won’t cut it). Where are you putting these stashes? (I guess your personal stashes might be small enough to be FDIC insured, so maybe pretend to be a small startup with a couple millions in cash.)
And regarding your point on banks hating to sit on money - they have to make money somehow as they have bills to pay. They can either charge a fee to hold your money or try to make money off deposits. The latter is obviously riskier, but the former is on average worse for consumers (they lose money by having money..?). If you would rather not pay money to have someone hold it for you, fractional reserves are a necessary construct.
Edit:
> Looks like we live in such a world already
Not if the FDIC successfully makes everyone whole without spending taxpayer money! Which, again, seems like a positive outcome no one should be rooting against.
> in practice the average person puts money in the bank primarily for storage.
> If you ask someone why they have a bank account, odds are the answer is not “to make money”
> They do it because it’s commonly held financial advice that this is better than putting cash in a box under their mattress (not just for returns, but for safety and ease of access).
Well, that's the problem. People actually believe this "your money is safe at the bank" common sense. Tell them otherwise and they treat you like you're one of those tinfoil hat crazies. Maybe they'll believe otherwise when the banks fail and their money is lost.
> It is not fair to lump these people in with shareholders, in terms of profit expectation, and say they have just as little right to their money back.
Sure it is. They loaned their money to the bank. They exposed themselves to the risk that the loan would not be paid back. That they were ignorant of what they were doing does not somehow excuse them of their culpability.
> I’m sure you have a stash of money somewhere for paying bills
I have exactly $0 in my personal checking account. All expenses are paid with credit. Then I pay the bank off in full the second money enters my account. Any and all remainders are immediately invested until $0 remains.
> You probably also have a larger stash as an emergency fund, which doesn’t need to be as immediately accessible but still needs relatively quick access (so a CD won’t cut it).
My emergency fund is about the only thing I keep in a bank account long term. In several liquid investment accounts in different banks. With full knowledge these banks could flop at any moment.
> I guess your personal stashes might be small enough to be FDIC insured, so maybe pretend to be a small startup with a couple millions in cash.
In my country, bank accounts are insured up to some amount per bank per our social security number equivalent. Therefore, when that amount is exceeded, I spread them over multiple banks. If money accumulates to the point I can buy real property, I immediately do so instead of leaving it at the bank.
It's a pretty simple algorithm.
> And regarding your point on banks hating to sit on money - they have to make money somehow as they have bills to pay.
Or they could charge you for the storage service instead. Maybe if banks were in the storage business it'd actually make sense to pay them a single cent in fees. They're not, so it doesn't.
> Not if the FDIC successfully makes everyone whole without spending taxpayer money! Which, again, seems like a positive outcome no one should be rooting against.
Yeah, and everyone just keeps on believing in banks. Positive outcome for them, not for society as a whole.
I guess your system works, but I hope you’d agree it’s quite the hassle! It also seems you’d be ok with paying fees for pure money storage, though hopefully you can see why the average person would hate such a setup.
I think from your POV that banks are horrible, thinking that even depositors should lose their money is in fact a defensible argument. So I concede that your view is one I can respect despite disagreeing.
But in my view, banks are a useful fiction because of the utility they provide (specifically easy storage of and convenient access to money). Even if a person can buy property to reduce bank risk (again, a super inconvenient workaround!), I’m not sure I want _businesses_ to be doing so, especially in light of the likely resulting impact on property values. I acknowledge a system relying on banks indeed has risks, but to me that’s a stronger argument for better regulations and protections to mitigate the risks than it is an argument to dissolve the system and lose its benefits.
I also concede that this fiction is convenient. I oppose it mainly because I completely distrust the current bank based implementation of it. Technology that obsoletes banking has yet to be invented. I thought cryptocurrencies would change something but they turned into stocks instead. Even worse: they literally reinvented banks on top with all of the downsides and none of the benefits. There's also the fact they don't solve secure storage: nothing stops some criminal from holding you at gunpoint and forcing you to irreversibly transfer cryptocurrencies to their wallets. Nothing stops them from kidnapping people and emptying their credit cards and bank accounts either but at least society manages to make the bank absorb some if not all of those losses. My country launched a central bank electronic transfers service and every day I see news of people irreversibly scammed out of tens of thousands.
Real property solves that problem best. The criminal can't take you to the government office with a gun to your head and force you to sign over the property to him. Property is also what capitalism is all about: actually owning stuff. Engaging in it keeps the fabled "you'll own nothing" dystopia at bay.
I do expect interest payments from any money of mine that's not in my physical posession. Checking accounts don't pay interest so I don't use them. They're just a temporary register for my "pay bills" and "invest" operations.
I don’t know where you’ve been banking for the last ten years or so, but I wish I did — interest payments on liquid deposits weren’t a thing for a long time. And startups don’t “invest”, they only “pay bills”.
I'm brazilian so I use brazilian banks. Some of my banks pay me interest on liquid accounts. I don't allow money to accumulate in the accounts of those that don't. I also spread my investments over as many banks as possible: my accounts are independently insured for up to some amount. I also move money off of the banks as soon as humanly possible by buying real property instead. I don't trust them.
You bet. My father did too. It's one of many reasons why he was highly successful in responsibly managing the money of every institution he was ever put in charge of.
They're not shareholders, they are creditors, by definition. That's why bank statements have a little "CR" next to the balances. In a bankruptcy, shareholders get wiped out first, then creditors start taking haircuts... it's worked this way since forever.
Did you read the title of this thread? No one is arguing about bailing out a bank. There is a difference between bailing out a bank, and ensuring customers of said bank who did nothing wrong gain access to their money. Yellen is saying this exact thing. For some reason people like yourself are unable to differentiate between the two.
"People like myself" are tired of watching banks wreaking havoc and suffering zero consequences for it. Their "safe investment strategies" failed, they're not solvent/liquid enough to pay back their customers, they're getting literally liquidated in a desperate attempt to raise enough money to make everyone whole again. And yet people keep depositing money into these things as if it's not a systemic problem.
I make it a point not to differentiate between the two. Bailing out a bank's customers is bailing out the bank. By all means, liquidate the bank and distribute that cash. People are already commenting down below that it might not be enough. If it's not enough, tough. They made a bet and they lost. Consider not using a bank next time.
Alot of people are rightfully upset because the banking industry cannot seem to get its shit together.
Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ?
Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ?
> Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ?
This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly.
> Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ?
I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have.
> This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly.
So the solution to just let banks do whatever they want? A bank that is prevented from taking excessively risky action becomes insolvent, and your answer is to allow them to take even more risk? The Fed has been signaling for a year that rates are going to keep rising, it is eminently predicable what that means to professionals in the industry. Hubris at its best. Have you even heard of Glass–Steagall, or have a basic understanding of the last 100 years of economic theory?
> I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have.
A laughably naïve thing to say in more than a few ways.
This is the community that claims that it will save the world. While it behaves with such shortsightedness that it can’t even save their piggy bank. Should it be trusted with more money and power (that the bailout gives)?
There's another layer to this: many of these bullshit startups are in crypto, which spent the past 5+ years undermining trust in centralized banking and the Fed. Now this world is crying out for a bailout. It's just so rich. Like why would I want to support a16z's businesses in a time like this?
You're begging for money from the government to compensate you for your own personal failures. I think you need to re-read your Nietzsche if you think this makes the people saying no to that corrupted by ressentiment.
They're just trying to help you overcome your shackles of dependence on the sweet teat of Uncle Sam. Get some bootstraps and climb out of this hole on your own merit!
It's just that rather than them failing because their product was bad or they're working on a bullshit idea, they might fail because their bank failed? And not some fancy crypto bank, a regular, government-regulated bank? Even if you want to see the startup space fall, that's a rather unsatisfying way for it to happen. It's not a SBF moment.
I think that sentiment is directed against a strawman that doesn’t really exist. The reality is that startups with “no real business” just fail after burning through investor cash and nobody gets anything.
I think this mostly comes from the PayPal mafia sort of attitude: libertarian when it helps me, bail me out when it helps me, start a bank run when it helps me.
There was a time when tech did seem like a better business movement. Certainly better than the financial sectors, or heavy industry, or pharma. But then we let Thiel and Musk become the face, with Sachs and Calacsnais (or however you spell his name) become their media toadies, and we got fucked on the PR front.
We need to reject these guys a bit harder. Thiel's bank run was unnecessary. He should have picked up the phone and got the numbers from SVB instead of destroying an institution that's so helpful for small founders. Founders are now more dependent on Thiel and his ilk, and less independent.
Yes, it seems that the antisocial defectors are going to win in the short term and may have more power in the long term. Any suggestions onto how to inject some discipline and long-term thinking into this?
I am not smart enough to have a full solution, but I think part of it must include some honest examination of all the players here, including the big ones whose mere opposition has a chance of crushing new founders. So a lot of that has to come from other established players in the space. Maybe being a little bit less eager to hop on to rounds led by these folks. Use soft power at a minimum.
But what do I know, I'm just a nobody in the space! Others who have more power, wealth, and wisdom will be able to handle this better. (And I should point out that I don't absolve SVB of their errors here either, it's just that I think their errors are more about miscommunication about a bad situation of their own doing that had a clear solution ).
> Silicon Valley law firms are now making lists of individuals who resigned from boards last week, because they didn’t want to get stuck with the liability, and VCs who catalyzed SVB’s bank run, so they can advise clients to never do business with those people/firms again
There aren't that many libertarians in tech compared to other areas, in my experience.
The difference is that some of the libertarians are very noisy about their politics, whereas most people in tech don't make that much public noise about politics.
When you combine that dynamic with The NY Times deciding that it has to denigrate tech as an industry and take it down a few pegs (a literal mandate from their editors!), the jerks gain prominence, and tech looks the worse for it. And I would say that the PayPal mafia's sins aren't so much being libertarian as just being awful people that are super easy to hate. For example, musk calling that one guy a pedo, or taking pleasure in firing people.
This assholery has now become synonymous with tech, but it is completely counter to my experiences in tech, but maybe I've just been lucky.
That’s an insane argument to make while using the tech that came from SV to make it.
“Sustainable” businesses are not how American economy differentiates itself in the world, what you’re asking for is to crush the way of life yourself used to in America, to make your own life substantially worse.
It’s nonsensical, bitter, and petty. If that’s the argument you want to make, grow up.
People in general who are not good at something or didn't find success in that field, in order to feel their salt's worth have 2 options - either build something that's far greater than what they are not good at, or disparage what they you are not good at. The latter is a lot easier.
This is confused in many ways. The only people who care about “mass surveillance” are tech insiders. It’s incoherent to be mad about fake business models and too much money being made at the same time - if startups are stupid then VCs are losing their shirts (and if we hate them, then we should help them do it even bigger and faster). If Silicon Valley is an engine of runaway wealth inequality then objectively speaking, the business model works. Making things people want generates profit, which is always and inherently evil according to communists, and enriches investors/executives/employees faster than the average person, which according to anyone who is committed to “income inequality is bad” also makes the world worse.
First of all, even if the company you work for goes bankrupt, you're very likely to still receive your salary, as debts to workers are the highest priority in any bankruptcy case. So the risk to workers' livelihoods is being way overblown. Of course, if a substantial amount of your compensation was company stock, you may lose a lot on that, but that is par for the course with stock.
Second of all, the purpose of having a limit to FDIC insured deposits is to limit the government's liability in case of bank failures to small-ish depositors. A company thag has millions of dollars to deposit also has more responsibility to evaluate the bank they are depositing in. Perhaps they shouldn't keep money in the bank in the first place, but find other uses for them.
Note that the true FDIC insurance limit is much larger than the 250k that usually gets cited - since there are various facilities for business accounts which can take that up to a million $ or more (multiple signers on the same account, multiple types of accounts). Should be plenty for most startups to pay their employees' salary outright, even without going bankrupt.
I'll probably get my next paycheck or two, but I'll lose my job. You're pretty clearly saying here that I should lose my job, along with many other people, because of the bank at which my company's cash is stored.
> Perhaps they shouldn't keep money in the bank in the first place, but find other uses for them.
I work at a small startup that's raised five million dollars. Not a huge amount of money, but obviously losing all but 250k would be extremely damaging. You're talking about concepts of fiscal responsibility here, but then you're suggesting that businesses should deploy virtually all of their cash and keeping close to nothing in reserve. Our founders are extremely fiscally prudent and purposely keep a very low burn rate, which is exactly why that money is in the bank instead of being used elsewhere.
You do not have a right to a job at the taxpayers expense. We all feel for you and are rooting for the workers but no one has an inmate right to others money. Especially when the right being demanded is size figure salaries.
If you were to lose your job, there is a standardized insurance that kicks in that all Americans get.
You are demanding special, better treatment at the tax payers expense.
Look, everyone on this forum is going to be affected by this. I myself was laid off a few weeks ago due to the tech bubble.
It's still not right to demand other people's money and act entitled. We all get it's hard out there right now.
This is a red herring though. Your company isn't losing 4.75 million. They're likely going to lose 0-10% of that.
The actual question is should tax payers give a company that has ~4.5 million in cash and is worth some multiple of that some free money? And that should be an emphatic no.
The company is unlikely to lose all but $250,000 as SVB (reportedly)still has plenty of assets it’s just some of the bonds they hold are under water due to interest rate rises
You should question why $5mn was kept in a normal bank (with an unusual customer profile) rather than being placed in money market funds etc., or why the company didn’t insure the funds above $250,000
I'm not sure your founders are as "extremely" prudent as you claim them to be. For example, couldn't they have spread their funds throughout more banks instead of putting their eggs in one basket?
So anybody who raises money should put a max of 250k into any given bank? My CEO should spend his time managing 20 different bank accounts?
I just think that if we look at it from the big picture - what's best for the country/society/etc. - that we're collectively much better off if a business that puts its money into a decades-old, reputable financial institution can count on it being there the next week.
(Also I do feel like I should clarify that I'm using my company as a kind of general example... I have no idea where our money is stored and I'm on paternity leave at the moment so just going to hang out with my new kid and hope this all works out).
My CEO should spend his time managing 20 different bank accounts?
No, that's silly, and it's not standard practice for a business to have more than 1-2 accounts per country. Anyone here claiming their companies actually did that is just trying to earn internet points for something they didn't actually do.
It's absolutely not believable that guys on here are claiming that they founded "multiple startups" and had 10-20 bank accounts (or more) because they were hedging the risk of bank failure. It would be like someone saying they had 10-20 computers at home because they were worried about their CPU failing. It's so remote a risk that it's not something you fuck up your finances to hedge.
A finance dept is absolutely not going to put up with the BS and hassle associated with maintaining more than 3-4 active bank accounts (checkings, savings, and one or two interest-earning accounts such as a cash sweep that might not be covered by FDIC insurance), because there is a large time and financial cost to constantly moving money around to pay the bills. This practice also replaces the extremely small risk of bank failure with the much greater risk of embezzlement, misplaced funds, delinquent payables, and lost receivables.
The only way to safely store money in excess of the $250k threshold is through government bonds, with the selection of terms based on the forecasted liquidity needs of the business. The other options suggested here (like sweep accounts) aren't any better than FDIC-insured accounts, because in most cases the alternatives aren't insured at all.
There are services that will spread balances across tons of accounts. The problem is that YC made people keep all their startup's money only in SVB instead of spreading it around.
YC doesn’t make you keep your money anywhere, they don’t even suggest any place or even say anything about startup banking (unless you were to ask one of the partners for advice). Even a cynical take would suggest they’d prioritize their portcos who launched banks for startups (like Brex), but even still in my experience they haven’t even done that.
According to Ankit Parasher, Co-Founder of YC-backed fintech start-up SALT, “SVB was the default bank for any international start-up expanding operations to the US. It was a stable bank and most VCs recommended it, so the impact of SVB failure is expected to be even larger than just Indian SaaS companies and YC-backed start-ups.”
Even still, YC doesn’t give any recommendations on bank account that I’ve seen. For ourselves, we had to do some corporate clean up before YC and while they connected us to the right lawyers and provided basic review, it was really just between us and our lawyers. For wiring the money, they just ask you where to send it.
SVB is no doubt popular, but YC makes no recommendations on any banks whatsoever in my experience
But is that a good thing for society? Adding a rent-seeking middleman that doesn't actually contribute anything except a technical workaround for an issue that can be solved directly by the governemnt?
It's called risk management, it costs money and it's something anyone running a business should be familiar with. Don't run your company like a multimillion dollar lemonade stand.
From an insurance perspective, why is it ok to guarantee payment to 20 x $250k but not $5mm? From a payout perspective the amount is the same, is it just the single point of failure risk?
Do you think most entities socialize the cost of their finances by just dividing up millons to billions between infinite banks and customers of this bank are the only ones not doing this? This seems unlikely. What you are proposing would obviously cost more money in practice else it would make no sense for you to propose it.
Lets take it another way. Why not limit FDIC insurance such that its harder to stack them and derive more benefit?
Sure, if we change the limit of FDIC so it's harder to stack that would make sense. e.g. coverage is per entity not per account.
But that's not what people here are suggesting. People are suggesting to divide the funds so that it's all covered. That it was irresponsible of companies NOT to do that and hence they deserve not to get the full deposit amount back.
EDIT: yes it'll cost more money to split today. But it's a waste. The extra cost doesn't go to the FDIC or tax payers, it just goes to a middleman. So then why not just raise the FDIC limit? (or change the rules so you can't split it)
You are oversimplifying their argument. People are suggesting that people use more than one bank or make a service that involves using more than one bank not necessarily infinite banks. It isn't necessary to choose between zero risk and existential risk. You can with only modest effort achieve moderate risk.
the math is still the same though, just different degrees. If we (as tax payers) are ok with insuring 3 accounts (as an example) x 250k each, why are we not ok with insuring 1 account for 750k?
Are you really suggesting they open up 20 different bank accounts? And not only pay the monthly account fees but also pay a bookkeeper to upload statements for all 20 banks into the accounting system? And have appropriate controls on all money movements? And float money between the accounts each time payroll or some large expense is run? And follow the financial results of all of those banks in order to find signs of weakness?
Id rather be in a world where businesses don’t have to spend so much time playing games with their bank accounts and just trust that their money is safe, which is why the fdic needs to guarantee the deposits.
That sounds like just another cost of doing business.
Companies RAID-stripe the data on their hard drives, they can pay somebody to spread the risk in their finances.
(At a certain scale this eventually becomes inevitable. Google actually has a huge real estate and finances arm precisely because they have the kind of money pool that is impacted by things like nation-state failure and changes to the tax code in 50 states).
What about my cash sweep account?
So, here’s the good thing about the cash sweep account: the assets held in the cash sweep account aren’t bank deposits or on SVB’s balance sheet—they’re held by a third-party custodian. So our understanding is you should be able to recover 100% of the funds there, regardless of what happens to the uninsured deposits at SVB.
Apparently they did that on purpose to be better able get a view on the activity of the money they poured in. Someone on a different thread is pointing to the levers VCs had in SVB for this exact purpose.
Exactly. If you’re forced to use SVB because of your founders, you don’t have a recourse on the bank.
But there is also a risk question that companies are responsible for that I see is glossed over. No, you shouldn’t have to spread your business accounts to limit them to 250k. But you must know it’s not insured above this, just like a money market account is not a guaranteed rate of return or even guaranteed against capital loss.
I’m just spitballing, but for example what was the rate on a “money market” checking at SVB versus other larger national banks? If it was much higher, it immediately indicates higher risk in a business checking account at SVB to get those rates. You can see this way back with the old junk bond / Lincoln Savings fiasco of the 1980s, or with 2008 MBS, or CD accounts in early 2000s.
Would you suggest that every small business in the US with working capital over the FDIC limits do something like this? It would be a massive waste of resources. FDIC insurance exists to stabilize this part of the financial system.
There is a risk question that companies are responsible for that I see is glossed over. No, you shouldn’t have to spread your business accounts to limit them to 250k. But you must know it’s not insured above this, just like a money market account is not a guaranteed rate of return or even guaranteed against capital loss. Have lines of credit with alternate banks, or insurance on that additional money.
Or, just like when the market tanks, you suck it up and get back 80% of your capital on deposit because you couldn’t foresee a money market checking account could lose capital even though it’s spelled out on EVERY SINGLE statement and offering letter from the bank.
Yes, I would definitely suggest and recommend for businesses to not have a single point of failure for something as important as their working capital.
Yes, that is the letter of the law. The intent, given that the FDIC emerged from the Great Depression, is to prevent bank runs.
Most banks with a large retail deposit base are immune from bank runs. SVB is unique in that it didn’t have a large retail deposit base yet also had a bimodal customer distribution (financially sophisticated VCs and later-stage startups/enterprises and early stage startups which have the financial sophistication of your local auto mechanic).
No acquiring bank will want to touch SVB because of its lack of retail deposits - the risk of account holders fleeing at the earliest opportunity is very high. That forecloses one of the FDIC’s main tools for resolving a bank collapse - especially one of this magnitude.
So we have a very unique situation here: a large mostly commercial bank that, unlike most large commercial banks, has a bunch of mom-and-pop level customers.
I don’t know what the solution is, but hopefully it will go in the direction of minimizing impact on these small businesses.
You get your last paycheck, sure, but you still lose your job which is definitely a threat to workers lively hoods.
It's even more of a threat if the whole sector you're employed in suffers simultaneously, as it becomes difficult to continue to be employed in that sector.
I say as a person who’s been laid off twice and worked for a company that went bankrupt — why is that my problem?
Why should you get my money?
(In the case of the company I worked for which went bankrupt — we were a fintech startup with a truly innovative and fantastic product. Our management made three bad decisions which led to our demise. Two were technical and would have been recoverable, the last was a strategic move which ultimately proved disastrous.)
Exactly. I got a letter from my last startup Thu at 11pm telling us they had no cash for payroll tomorrow and we were all laid off. Poor planning along with super-lean cash flow broke my employer.
This is no different. For example, how many business checking accounts are backed by money market funds to get a little interest on them? Clearly states in offerings that rates aren’t guaranteed and you could even lose capital. Same with the $250k FDIC limit - clear risk with zero forethought from these employers of hedging it with lines of credit, payroll/business continuity insurance, etc.
Those are things “slow” companies do, not move fast and break things companies do (sarcasm intended - I have worked in R&D in both types multiple times).
It's because there is a cost associated with this insurance. It's not a bottomless pit of money, as FDIC pays out using the funds it collects from the participant banks and receives no funding from the government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp...). I think it should be possible for the bank to get better coverage, but they should be paying much larger premium if they want insurance up to 250mm instead of 250k.
I also think that similar to "FDIC insured" labels in bank branches, FDIC should require posting "13% of deposits are FDIC insured" to help assess risk for those clients that have uninsured funds.
Why is the government involved beyond that limit in this case? Could it be they want to give the average person peace of mind while retaining the flexibility to handle a restructuring however they deem best?
If things get dire enough, the government can intervene to protect workers in various ways (unemployment benefits, emergency housing, government employment - there are many options).
No need to prop up the middlemen with free insurance.
Unemployment insurance is already available. California and all the west coast states at least will also give free insurance in many cases. There is little risk to being unemployed especially for a short term while employees slowly get their money back after the asset sales.
I don't really see the big problem here.
Svb still has substantial assets. In the coming weeks, they will be sold and solid portions of the money returned. If companies have to temporarily furlough people, they will still get a reasonable wage that most Americans live on.
> The DIF is funded mainly through quarterly assessments on insured banks. A bank's assessment is calculated by multiplying its assessment rate by its assessment base. A bank's assessment base and assessment rate are determined and paid each quarter.
Not sure if that's going to cover the haircut that depositors are going to take with respect to the difference in SBC's asset values at liquidation. There is surely going to be some gap and the question is should the taxpayers be on the hook for that gap to make the depositors whole.
Because it minimizes harm and stabilizes the economy. There are benefits to providing safety nets to people who didn’t have a hand in their own misfortune. Specifically those people get to continue providing value. The modern economy is not zero sum. Work creates value, it is in everyone’s interest to stabilize productive workers.
The owners of the bank aren’t being bailed out. The FDIC is only paying back depositors. That is the working class. This bank doesn’t just cater to big bad VCs.
When depositors lose their savings through no fault of their own the whole system comes crashing down. That won’t help blue collar workers.
> So the risk to workers' livelihoods is being way overblown
If this were 2015 I would agree. But it's 2023 and thousands of software engineers are already struggling to find work after layoffs. Companies shutting down en masse because of SVB will soften what is already an employer's market for talent.
This may hurt specific founders and VCs a lot, but total damages (in the form of a softer market for engineers) may hurt the average employee more, even if they aren't directly affected.
> Perhaps they shouldn't keep money in the bank in the first place, but find other uses for them.
If this is the position you want to take, that's fine, but you need to own the consequences of that position. The point of the FDIC is that you don't have to worry about the credit-worthiness of your bank before deciding to do business with them. If that's not true anymore, then I'm pulling every dollar out of my local bank and giving it all to Goldman Sachs. Everyone else will do the same, and now you've destroyed small regional banks and make the biggest ones even bigger and more powerful. Was that worth it to "own the techbros"?
There's something the airline industry does where they don't compete on safety. They're all safe. You don't want banks to start competing on safety; they should all be safe.
No normal bank is safe without government backing.
Banks are inherently vulnerable to bank runs, because they work with money across different time intervals. For example, a hypothetical small town bank might turn checking and savings accounts into mortgages. If everyone decides to withdraw their savings all at once, the bank can't call all the mortgages due. So if everyone panics all at once, banks will fail. So we try to regulate the risks taken by banks, and we provide government-backed insurance. To be honest, the last-ditch "insurance" behind most banks is sovereign power.
It has been a long time since companies have lost money in bank failures. Everyone has gotten complacent.
The failure of SVB means that a great many people are suddenly seeing new risks. Come Monday, I expect to see lots of companies moving funds. And lots of banks hold government bonds that have fallen substantially in value because of the rapid changes in interest rates.
I will be very happy if we get out of this with few bank failures.
My first suggestion would be as T-Bills. I've asked a lot of questions on HN in the past few days about this, and I'm still not sure why it was not standard practice. Why people in position of authority trust bank deposits after 2008 I do not understand.
>My first suggestion would be as T-Bills. [...], and I'm still not sure why it was not standard practice.
Corporations have always split their cash into cash and "almost-cash-equivalent" liquid assets (like Treasury Bills). E.g. one can read any random 10-k corporate filing and there will be a line item for short term assets like "T-bills" because companies like to earn interest on their excess cash. The corporate treasurer is responsible for managing that mix.
But a company still needs working cash in the bank account for payroll and to pay vendors. The smaller startups may have not have enough excess cash to bother with splitting some of it into T-bills.
> a company still needs working cash in the bank account for payroll and to pay vendors
I also don't understand this. Why can't the working cash be a loan from the bank secured on the T-Bills? Then the depositor bears essentially no risk because they have no net balance with the bank. Essentially, why can't companies' working cash be overdraft? That way it's the bank that bears the risk rather than the companies. That's the whole point of the bank!
I guess one downside is that the bank will apply higher funding charges for that kind of arrangement. Well, the depositors should suck it up. You have to pay a price for resilience.
I guess there are other fine points of corporate finance that I have yet to grasp, but I'm learning a lot from the comments on HN. Thanks for your reply.
Loans are not made from deposits even now. But you may well be right that there are operational details that make my idea impossible, I don't know. HN seems to have some people with understanding of corporate finance, so hopefully they'll be able to educate me.
I think there are a variety of products reducing cash risk to zero. Something like t-bill positions for overdraft protection might be one such.
But notice that it's not in the bank's interest to provide them or push them if they do. They would rather you trust them and provide them the cheap float.
That thread seems to be insinuating that startup executives were offered mortgages in return for keeping their treasury as deposits in SVB. If so that sounds like a massive violation of fiduciary duty. (I don't have any concrete evidence of this and I'm just going by one Twitter thread I've read, so take with a mountain of salt.)
the issue is that startup founders might have a lot of implied wealth based on the equity they hold and money raised but a "mainstream" bank is going to look at that equity, assess it as non-liquid and highly speculative and reject any loan applications
svb was more likely to extend personal loans to startup founders because -- in theory at least -- they better understood startup finance and they were incentivized to provide good service to prospective customers of their more business focused activities
No they don't, because the banking system is fractional reserve. Pretty much every bank has more outstanding loans that deposits (even if part of those loans is to the government).
Thanks, I think there's something faulty in my understanding of terminology. By "deposits" I was understanding "deposits backed by holdings at the central bank".
The original question I was trying to answer was "If everyone gets cash from loans, who'll be the depositors putting cash in the bank to be loaned?". I just don't think that question is well-posed. A bank creating a loan requires new cash deposits of only R x loan_amount, where R is the reserve requirement. For making payroll this ought to be almost nothing.
> By "deposits" I was understanding "deposits backed by holdings at the central bank".
Ok. That would be reserves. But it's not like some deposits are backed and others are not (leaving aside the existence of different kinds of deposits) - what you have is a total amount of deposits and a total amount of reserves.
Yes, I understand that. But I don't understand why we couldn't have a system whereby, to cover payroll, a bank creates a loan to each company every payroll day, transfers cash to the (FDIC insured) bank accounts of employees, and then liquidates some of the company's T-Bills over the next couple of hours or days to cover it. That seems like a way of making sure everyone's paid without companies having to risk > $250k balances at any time.
Uneducated in this space, but why don't we see more T-Bill ownership transfer?
I owe vendor $100k. I transfer $100k of T-bills. They are paid cash equivalent, no?
The obvious thing that comes to mind is I am guessing there is some lockup of those t-bills maturing? Wouldn't this make sense for the Fed (Or some government entity) to be the broker+last resort to allow conversion of t-bill to someone else at a cost of breaking the term?
Even though the t-bill itself would still exist until maturity on the Fed's side and now company A is able to always guarantee payment transfer.
What I want is irrelevant. Yes, there are companies (banks) and instruments that I use to help manage cash. I know that every time I have too much cash in one bank account, I am at risk. It appears some companies are learning this only now.
I managed cash flow of my business through 2008. I worked through the recessions in the 90s and 2000s. When I was young, I worked for an employer who had seen banks fail in the Great Depression. He taught me not to trust a single bank. Nobody should.
Yeah, it would be nice if we had a well regulated financial system.
From what's been reported, SVB had money tied up in mortgage backed securities and T-Bonds (not bills) which take years to mature.
T-Bills are different than T-Bonds. T-Bills mature in weeks up to 1 year (4, 8, 13, 26, 52 week terms). They're a good way to assign your money you can't risk (like next month's payroll) while still earning interest on it and having access to it when you need it.
No, SVB invested in long term T-Notes or T-Bonds, not short term T-Bills. T-Bills have much less interest rate risk, because they have a maximum 52-week term.
It absolutely does. You should have 3 months of cash in the bank always. The rest should be in cash equivalents or short term investments. This is why most company’s with payrolls like that have a person called a “Treasury Officer” who manages all that and makes sure the bank accounts are funded adequately. They should also spread that around between banks to ensure that in the case of an issue with one facility there are other facilities or lines of credit to cover short term needs.
Anybody with more than $5 million in the bank should have someone dedicated to managing that money. If you don’t, then you’re not running a business properly. Startups like to skimp on important things like that and they shouldn’t. Any CFO with basic skills should be doing or arranging this depending on the size of the company. That’s literally their job.
Exactly. Even a business checking account with interest is backed partly/fully by money market funds. Those ALL come with offering sheets clearly spelling out returns aren’t guaranteed AND you could lose capital.
It’s simply poor money management by the employer to assume you can toss $1M-$5M in a business checking account and have zero risk. It’s not a personal account and it is clearly over the FDIC limits.
Anyone with $250K net worth knows there is risk here. Even my 80+ mother who is NOT finance savvy knows about this $250k limit and manages her life savings in different money market accounts to limit her exposure.
Multiple banks. There's one thing called counterparty risk and any firm with millions (or more) of US dollars in cash should have a function just to take care of this. But it seems a lot of tech firms' CFOs were sleeping at the wheel if it indeed transpires that all these firms were keeping their money all in one bank.
> even if the company you work for goes bankrupt, you're very likely to still receive your salary
Spoken like someone who has no experience with bankruptcy. The rule of thumb used to explain this to an unsecured creditors, before this happens, is -- dude, you might get 10 cents on the dollar. Employees are rarely made completely whole.
> as debts to workers are the highest priority in any bankruptcy case
Secured creditors have to get paid first. Then after quite a few other priority claims (attorneys, trustees must be paid, domestic support, etc.) employees are paid.
> So the risk to workers' livelihoods is being way overblown.
If the company you work for suddenly goes bankrupt, you're much more concerned about finding yourself unemployed in a not-great tech job market than collecting your last paycheck.
Don't forget how systemic this is. If your company goes bankrupt, it's likely a lot of similar tech companies also went bankrupt.
I'm sad to hear that, but by all accounts you should be able to receive your salary on Monday, when at least $250k should become available to your employer (though hopefully significantly more).
Sure, but the actual amount should be significantly more (a comment around was saying that any account secured with two signatures is ensured up to 500k, for example). And, it should be enough for the mid-month payroll of a 25-person team, which is the kind of company GP was talking about.
> Like a whole lot of people here, I've worked at startups for my whole career. People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money because our CEO used a well-reputed bank?
Cynicism reigns supreme on social media right now, and HN comments are a type of social media.
There is also a deeply engrained “us versus them” mentality baked into a lot of the anger. The SVB scenario has more people identifying the “us” part as taxpayers (who would presumably foot the bill for backstopping losses) and the “them” part as VCs and investors.
Interestingly, if this was rephrased as an “Ask HN” post where someone was concerned about their next paycheck because their startup’s bank failed, I suspect the sentiment would be completely reversed. The more relatable the story, the kinder the comments.
I get what you’re saying, but how many well-intentioned startups have imploded and ran out of money the day before payday due to some unlikely risk? Lots (I was in 1-2 of them). Should we also try to salvage them?
“Well-reputed bank” is not the same as zero risk money management. Look at the fine print of every one of those business checking accounts and you see there is clearly some risk, including loss of capital if you’re over the $250k limit. Everyone who has a retirement account in money markets at a “well-reputed bank” knows about this risk, so how can we let the CFO slide on finance risk management that was clearly their most important responsibility? Business continuity insurance, lines of credit, investor infusion, etc. Debt sales, etc. There are ways to get around an unexpected cash crunch.
But there’s no excuse for not knowing the risk and expecting a $1M checking account to work like your personal checking account. This was the CFOs job at every one of the companies that is now in a crunch.
There's also the modern 'anti-capitalist' crowd that nebulously always blame everything on 'capitalism' while also unironicaly enjoying, you know, owning private property, choosing their own jobs and investing in stocks, while at the same time distrusting government. Because we don't actually need to implement Marxism or state ownership or any other alternative economic system, we just need to not capitalism. Or something. I'm sure they're loving all of this.
Why should taxpayers pay for all of it? It's not like SVB had $0 in assets. Liquidation will hopefully cover enough to keep the lights on at smaller companies with uninsured deposits. The big depositors like Roku might lose something.
Lest we forget that even TARP was actually a net profit for taxpayers.
Very little of these discussions have anything to do with serious policy debate. They're a prism through which the whole site† filters their preexisting beliefs about venture capital and the startup industry. When you internalize that, it's much easier to look at an 800-comment third- or fourth- order HN thread about SVB and just nope out. There are no stakes to these threads. They're just here because the community needs to vent its reaction to the news and its valence.
† (50% of which is outside the of the US, and a majority of which is people who don't work for "big tech", which ironically isn't much at all directly impacted by SVB)
As a long-time tech person and someone who has started multiple companies, including one venture-backed one, I'm happy to explain why I think uninsured depositholders should not have their losses subsidized by taxpayers.
One, anybody with a bank account has heard about the FDIC and the FDIC insurance limits. Presumably anybody smart enough to raise millions of dollars know that if part of something is insured, the rest is uninsured. There are in fact good systemic reasons both for the FDIC to exist and for the limit to be high for individuals but low for companies.
Two, the tech industry, especially the VC-funded end, is forever crowing about the power of the marketplace. How regulation stifles valuable innovation. How government intervention is a problem, not a solution.
Three, among startups, market-driven disruption is practically a religion. Startups destroy existing companies all the time. Quite often it's an explicit goal, where startup X lists existing players A and B as companies whose lunches will get eaten because they are making bad choices.
Four, there has been endless puffery and chest-thumping among VCs and tech startups how their genius justifies pocketing billions and billions of dollars when times are good. Best and brightest, incredibly hard workers, blah blah blah. Including a special tax exemption for VCs, because they're just such amazing financial wizards.
Five, startup go under all the time. Which, having experienced it, definitely sucks. But when a startup goes under due to bad choices or bad luck, that's the game.
So when I put this together, I firmly believe that startups with bad treasury management should not be subsidized by taxpayers. If we're so smart and amazing that we get to reshape segments of the economy, we're smart enough to follow basic financial advice like "don't put all your eggs in one basket". If we choose to play the game that might make us rich, we should not suddenly complain about the rules when we lose.
In practice, the likely outcome here is that depositors either take no haircut or a modest one. Anybody going out of business because of that was already on the edge. And that will be partly because their investors will not see them as worthy of a bridge loan or an accelerated next round.
Which, again, sucks for the people involved. But it's not a problem for taxpayers to solve. If we're going to spend billions of dollars on improving the safety net, I think startups are way, way down the list of priorities.
This was back when A rounds were much more modest in size. We put it in one of the largest and therefore most highly regulated banks, the ones that now have to meet Basel III standards. If we'd had more money, we would have put it in 2 banks. A solution that would have been enough for almost everybody here, as the main thing causing a risk of not making payroll is the way the FDIC is locking up a good chunk of the uninsured funds while they sell off SVB's assets.
> Two, the tech industry, especially the VC-funded end, is forever crowing ... there has been endless puffery and chest-thumping among VCs and tech startups
When you find yourself cheering for collective punishment you should know that you are absolutely the bad guy.
I am not in fact arguing for collective punishment. I am arguing for people experiencing the consequences of their choices. The paragraph you quote is about their ardent insistence on being allowed to make those choices without interference.
Are those employees of companies whose business model is "driving artists out of business by large-scale copyright infringement and automated drawing based on it?", for example?
That looks to be an unlikely scenario, but let's indulge it.
Can capitalism be pretty harsh on workers? Sure. 1-2 million people get laid off or let go every month, and it's been that way for a long time: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL
Does that suck? Speaking from experience, yes. Should the federal government subsidize startups and/or their funders to save a few thousand jobs? Absolutely not.
If we want to spend billions on a better social safety net, let's do it for everybody, not some unprofitable companies whose investors don't see them as worth saving.
Normally I'd think that an unfair point. We can't generally expect workers to evaluate the financial soundness of their employers. But we are talking about startups here. Everybody going in knows that most startups fail. Hopefully everybody has an exit plan.
Because it's a problem requiring graduate-level finance knowledge? Because it's so difficult that even the professionals find it challenging? Because the companies that go under were often working to hide that even from other sophisticated players?
If you think you can reliably tell the financial soundness of companies, don't post here about it. Go trade their stocks. You'll either make a mint or you'll have a very valuable lesson.
The text I quoted applies to a tiny number of people, few or even none of whom might actually be caught in SVB (as they may have managed to exit first!). But unless I'm misreading it's being used to justify that the harm was deserved by a vastly larger class.
There are lots of ways for a startup to die. If you have $2m cash do you really want to manage (2/0.25) bank accounts, adopt all that administrative overhead, just to reduce your probability of death by bank failure, when possibly the added overhead may increase your overall probability of death because now you are distracted and unfocused on the things that are far more likely to kill you?
> If we're going to spend billions of dollars on improving the safety net, I think startups are way, way down the list of priorities.
This is first order thinking which increases systemic risk by undermining trust. The probability of future bank runs goes up.
> Three, among startups, market-driven disruption is practically a religion. Startups destroy existing companies all the time. Quite often it's an explicit goal, where startup X lists existing players A and B as companies whose lunches will get eaten because they are making bad choices. > Four, there has been endless puffery and chest-thumping among VCs and tech startups how their genius justifies pocketing billions and billions of dollars when times are good. Best and brightest, incredibly hard workers, blah blah blah. Including a special tax exemption for VCs, because they're just such amazing financial wizards.
You're making broad generalizations about a large group of heterogeneous agents. You're also using language that's full of moral judgement (revenge, disgust) instead of focusing on stuff that matters to the economy or to everyday people.
> But it's not a problem for taxpayers to solve.
Why not? Taxpayers exist to fund things that are thought to be in the public good. And isn't it a lack of imagination to think that taxpayers are the only way to solve this? What about clawback of executive compensation or shareholder dividends?
I just love that all the people who have discovered treasury management this week think that a) the only way to do that is keep $250k in n accounts, and b) that even if that's what people did, it would be so incredibly burdensome.
If startups want to take on bank risk, great. If they don't, also great, and there are many ways for them to do that. They are allowed to manage their risks as they see fit. If they can't, that is not a problem for taxpayers to solve. I get why some people here are pitching "socialism, but only for would-be billionaires", but I promise it's not a winning proposition in the wider world.
> If they can't, that is not a problem for taxpayers to solve.
You haven't made the case that the cost doesn't justify the reduction in systemic risk, let alone the immediate economic fallout of otherwise good businesses going bust. To make that case you would first have to outline what the cost would be, then you would have to explain why that cost is too high relative to the benefit. Both of those steps are missing in your argument. No attempt has been made to quantify the cost or the benefit.
So far it sounds like a moral judgment. They made a mistake (in your opinion), they as a group have tended to be be arrogant, therefore they deserve to suffer the consequences. I don't care for moral judgments, they are uninteresting. Explain it in terms of costs and benefits to the economy and to people.
I don't have to make the case. The status quo, developed over literal centuries of bank regulation, is generally to let depositors take a haircut. Because depositors having skin in the game is an important check on the risk levels at for-profit banks.
If people want to argue for infinite free deposit insurance for the rich, they're the ones who need to make the case that the increase in moral hazard and increased taxpayer burden is worth if for the public to take on.
But if there's some sort of support-the-businesses goal in here, I think it's better to just argue for a government corporation that's a non-profit deposit-only bank that takes no risk and pays no interest. Then, if you're correct that there are a large number of safety-seeking people with millions in cash who just want to focus on entrepreneuring, they'll have an option that has zero failure risk.
I expect if we created that, though, it would see very little use, because people are happy to take risks when they think they can get away with them. And quite a large number of people are apparently also willing to ask Uncle Sugar for a bailout when their gamble doesn't come up like they wanted.
> The status quo, developed over literal centuries of bank regulation, is generally to let depositors take a haircut
Only if you go by common wisdom pre-Great Depression, which helped cause the Great Depression. But the opposite lessons have been learned since. That's why the FDIC was created in the aftermath of the Great Depression. It's the basis of the Nobel Prize winning Diamond–Dybvig model which inspired the TARP in the GFC which actually returned a profit to taxpayers. If depositors have too much skin in the game, it creates the potential for a bank run, which benefits nobody and harms everybody.
> increase in moral hazard
Which is where regulations need to come in. That's the bargain. You get FDIC guarantees, and I get to regulate you. It's a better bargain than the old wild west of bank runs and financial collapse.
Anyway, depositors as agents aren't good mediators of a bank's risk. There are too many informational asymmetries for that to be a good mechanism to rely on.
I am not saying we should rely on it. I'm saying rich depositors having some skin in the game is a valuable component of a for-profit banking system. And it's hardly ancient thinking to suggest that financially sophisticated players should use a little of that sophistication when picking a bank. You could read Bair's "Bull by the Horns" for somebody who understood the 2008 crisis very well but had big concerns about the moral hazard that bailouts create.
If the rich really want a risk-free bank, I'm all for the government creating one. No loans, no interest, no profit, just deposits and withdrawals, unlimited guarantee.
But I expect that won't happen, because the rich don't actually want pure safety. They want to privatize the gains from risk and socialize the losses. And the more they come to think that's achievable by, say, hysterically encouraging bank panics, the more we'll suffer for it.
The moral hazard that the GFC bailouts created mostly pertained to bailing out shareholders and executives, not bailing out depositors. Let's be careful to make this distinction.
There is some marginal added moral hazard from guaranteeing deposits, you are correct, but I believe this should be counteracted by regulation, executive compensation clawback laws, etc. We have learned from the Great Depression, the GFC, Diamond-Dybvig, that the systemic risk of bank runs isn't worth the marginal reduction in moral hazard from not guaranteeing deposits. If you don't have trust and confidence among people (and businesses, not just the "rich" in the abstract) that their money is safe in a bank, then all you need is social media panic and you can cause a financial crisis for no reason. This is a risk especially now in the age of social media.
The $250k amount was implemented because they thought it was enough to stop these kind of bank runs. After what we saw with SVB, we need to update our model of reality. $250k was proven to not be enough.
Taxpayers won't pay for anything. If there are any losses, it'll be socialized amongst other banks. I don't see the issue. The alternative of risking more bank runs seems a lot worse.
Approximately any business with this much cash has a rich person running things. So yes, let's stick with "the rich" as the group of interest.
Socializing the losses among other banks is not getting paid directly by taxpayers, but the money comes from somewhere. Making good banks cover bad banks just creates new moral hazard.
The basic notion of our current system is that for-profit banking is a generally good business and that we just need to limit systemic risk. Your thesis is apparently that for-profit banking is essentially unsound. That's not an argument for a bit of fiddling with the regulations. It's an argument to end for-profit banking.
Which, personally, I'm all for. Many people are claiming they just want their bank to be a utility, a magic mattress to stuff their money in. In which case, let's make banking deeply boring, and put the hundreds of billions per year in profits to better societal use.
> Making good banks cover bad banks just creates new moral hazard.
This misses something crucial. Socializing the losses among banks reduces the incentive for the industry to pursue lobbying efforts that are misaligned with the general public. It also directly refutes the wrong narrative that has been floating around that it's going to be poor little taxpayers bailing out the fatcats yet again.
> Your thesis is apparently that for-profit banking is essentially unsound. That's not an argument for a bit of fiddling with the regulations. It's an argument to end for-profit banking.
I disagree. Many industries need active government involvement to align them with the public good. Absent regulations and oversight, factories would be dumping waste in the street and rivers. Are factories "essentially unsound"? Just because we need government involvement to remove the "essential unsoundness" of factories, doesn't mean that I think it would be good for all factories to be shut down.
If you eliminate the FDIC, guess what, banks will still be profitable, just like they were in the 19th century, and just like factories would be profitable if we eliminated all environmental oversight. Only we'll get a terrible financial crisis every so often.
> So yes, let's stick with "the rich" as the group of interest.
Let's not. If we are talking about systemic risk and economic contagion, using the word "businesses" is better because it makes it clear what would happen if we follow your prescription. If we use the word "rich" (which many would assume to mean "rich individuals" since that's the context this word is often used in), we're playing rhetorical hide the ball with the consequences.
> Socializing the losses among banks reduces the incentive for the industry to pursue lobbying efforts that are misaligned with the general public.
That's not true. Individual banks will push for lower regulations because their execs want a chance at fat profits that they get to take a slice of. Just like SVB did.
>It also directly refutes the wrong narrative that has been floating around that it's going to be poor little taxpayers bailing out the fatcats yet again.
It does not.
Here the taxpayers are not directly bailing out anybody. But they are backstopping it, and have increased the risk they will have to to directly pay in the future. And they are indirectly doing so, because anybody with a bank account, which is basically everybody, is going to be paying more for loans or getting less in interest. If you'd like to hear an actual banker explain that, last night's Marketplace had a segment talking with a regional bank CEO where she talks about why she's not happy with having to pay for somebody else's losses.
I agree with you on this, but I'm thinking more as a matter of perspective. HN is just not a place where I expect to see vicious, anti-tech backlash given the demographics.
Perhaps it’s an anti-SV backlash? Seems misguided as a lot of the places that you’ll want to work at 5-10 years from now are probably depositors at SVB. I think we all have an interest in a trustworthy financial system so rooting for depositors to get wiped out seems particularly short sighted.
I think the demographics are changing, more so in higher visibility articles, but generally too.
I think the best part about HN has always been the comments discipline. People generally only respond when they have some knowledge (not just “I watched a YouTube video).
Except among left wing circles where tech has become synonymous with fascist. Most of the people I've seen calling for depositors to lose everything are leftwing of the woke variety.
Of course both right and left seem to ignore that bailing out a bank and backing up depositors are really very different policies an different issues.
Over 50% of startups fail. If you factor in acquisitions as failures, the number is closer to 90%.
HN has been around awhile and has been a hotbed of the same starry-eyed startup dream for a couple generations of young people getting on the carousel now, so I guess I'm not terribly surprised if the attitude "welcome to the club, we would print you a t-shirt but our printer startup went out of business" shows up around these parts from the folk who have been on the ride awhile.
There are a lot of folks who read HN who had their dream crushed for a lot stupider reasons.
ETA: that is something I'd like to see more of here though. There's a lot of folks who have been through a bust cycle and survived it and even stayed in the industry. What kept you going? How did you come out the other side? Was it as scary as it feels when you haven't done it before?
Spoiler alert (18:30): It was entrepreneurship that turned the economy around. Not fed policy.
SVB put their deposits in US Treasury Bonds. Commonly regarded as the safest investment vehicle there is. Then the fed raised interest rates, completely screwing over this strategy. Then VCs panicked, like sheep.
So now we're in a situation where the most successful startups in the innovation sector are at risk of being wiped out while the US economy is being guided toward recession to cool inflation. Go watch that talk- then tell me you really think its a good idea to let it all burn.
US Treasury Bonds are one of the safest investment vehicles, IF you match the interest and maturity to your liabilities. You cannot go and buy bonds that will mature and give you 1% per annum in 10 years when you have a debtor awaiting payment in 90 days. That's the huge risk mismanagement SVB did.
Having said that, I don't think startups will suffer big time - but they were the ones also who created the bankrun fueled by VC panic. However mismanaged SVB was, given enough time they had enough resources to turn this around.
This needs to be sticked at top. It’s not that hard to build a Treasury ladder with three month bills. This is not complicated and you don’t need to be Warren Buffett to figure this out.
One thing to remember about your last point is that the startups and VC’s that DIDN’T cause the bank run are the ones that will be hurt by this. So if anyone is in here thinking “they shouldn’t have tried to withdraw their money, thereby creating a bank run, if they didn’t want to lose their money!” You have to realize that there two separate groups of people here: the ones that withdrew their money and caused the bank run, and the other ones that didn’t cause the bank run and lost their money.
That said, I don’t blame anybody for causing the bank run. If I had a reason to believe that my personal bank might not be able to give me my money if I didn’t get it out right now, there is zero chance that I would leave my money there to vanish just to avoid causing a bank run for other people. Morals break down when my life savings and livelihood are on the line.
So what you're saying is the bank made investments based on a whole lot of assumptions. These assumptions were quickly invalidated by US policy changes and then the bank lost everything.
Yes, absolutely let it all burn. They risked it all on their "strategy" and lost. Why should they get bailed out in literally any way? I don't see the government showing up to bail me out when my "strategy" gets me liquidated, why the hell do these banks deserve that treatment? Let them face 100% of the consequences of their choices.
This is the second completely detached from reality statement you have made. The US government requires that banks spend 90% of their deposits on tbonds so that they can continue to fund the process of money creation.
The strategy is mandated by regulation post 2008. The mistake svb made was buying 10 year instead of 3 month. Hard to explain that one other than the fed said inflation would be transitory and it wasn’t.
> The mistake svb made was buying 10 year instead of 3 month. Hard to explain that one other than the fed said inflation would be transitory and it wasn’t.
So what you're saying is the bank made investments based on a whole lot of assumptions. These assumptions were quickly invalidated by US policy changes.
Depositors lent their money to the bank. They took a risk by trusting a bank to manage their money for them. The bank took their money, invested it and lost it all.
It didn’t lose it all. About 90% is still there as assets and is being sold as we speak. The liquid assets have been sold already, so 50% will go back to the depositors next week.
Of course but the point still stands. If it lost it all we’d all be in serious trouble. It lost ~10% and there’s a nonzero chance depositors will be made whole anyway (with zero taxpayer money involved).
There are hundreds of billions in assets owned by SVB. The accounts with grocery assets likely contain companies that will be future unicorns.
What is there to burn? A large bank will likely purchase the assets/debts outright, the shareholders will get screwed, and the depositors likely be made whole. There's no bailout in that scenario
If your strategy is keeping money in an FDIC insured bank account the government will absolutely bail you out. You have a guaranteed bail out up to the deposit insurance limits and a high-probability bailout for close to 100% of your funds through FDIC resolution.
Something tells me you don't understand the difference between the bank, its shareholders, and its account holders. Unless you just think its peachy that a bunch of businesses lose everything because their bank made some actually not all that risky investments and some people got spooked. This isn't 2008.
> Something tells me you don't understand the difference between the bank, its shareholders, and its account holders.
I understand the "difference" fine. I just refuse to believe there actually is a difference. They're all the same to me: people who lent their money to the bank so it could be invested and pay them dividends.
> Unless you just think its peachy that a bunch of businesses lose everything because their bank made some actually not all that risky investments and some people got spooked.
Why, that's exactly what I think. Looks like that "not at all that risky investment" didn't bring the outcome everyone expected. Oops. Looks like the free market screwed them over again. Such is life.
I suppose it's fine if they manage to liquidate the bank's assets and recover some of it. If they really insist on recovering it all, maybe they should liquidate the bank manager's personal property as well. As long as they don't see even one cent of taxpayer money, it's moral.
Because of secondary effects. It's not like SVB failure is limited to just depositors and start-ups. Which means way more damage than just the nominal amount lost.
By design the feds wanted to increase unemployment and salaries. Problem solved? I'm not trying to be mean or condesending. But who would / should the unemployed / wages come from? What sector?
It turns out that you can make everyone unemployed and it won’t fix the supply/labor shortage created by a lack of immigration and supply chain disruptions. The fed is using a hammer to fix a chipped vase because it’s all they know what to do.
I strongly agree. The feds do not have the tool set to fix the problem on inflation. 50% of inflation is opportunity by companies testing new price points.
We are in a pickle I don't think we are ready for what's to come in the future. I feel there will be a lot of pain in the future for the “little guy”
In 2008 and 2020 they had all sorts of special acquisition funds to do targeted support, now when the little guys is screwed suddenly they don’t have anything but raising interest rates? Like not even targeted interest rates?
You know what I think? This is just like any other time in history the labor class started getting too big for its britches. We are being told to go back down and stay there.
And that’s a really stark reality now that might change someone peoples support for government.
It's likely startups only exist to begin with due to low federal interest rates. It is obvious that if those rates are low investors will look elsewhere. Startups are one of those elsewheres. Now that rates are on the way up, there's no need for investors to risk their money on startups anymore. So startups no longer have one of the pre-conditions for their existence. Namely, free investor money literally pouring in and paying for all their expenses.
Such is life in the free market. Looks like the US government disrupted you. Doesn't mean the US taxpayer has to bail you out.
This is the exact lack of nuance that OP is talking about. Do you understand what is actually happening here? A bank is going under and potentially taking a ton of startups with it, not because of any poor decisions or lack of legit business model by the startups. It’s purely due to an internal implementation detail of the (until now) we’ll respected bank that holds their money.
I swear if it was called “generic bank” instead of “Silicon Valley Bank”, we wouldn’t be seeing all of these knee-jerk “good because they’re bad” responses.
> Do you understand what is actually happening here?
Do you have an actual argument that falsifies what I've said? I'm all about owning up to my mistakes but right now I have no reason to believe I'm being stupid. I thought stuff like this was going to happen the second I saw the Fed raising interest rates to combat inflation. Looks like time proved me right.
> A bank is going under and potentially taking a ton of startups with it, not because of any poor decisions or lack of legit business model by the startups. It’s purely due to an internal implementation detail of the (until now) we’ll respected bank that holds their money.
Yeah sure. A "minor implementation detail" of the bank... Honestly, this isn't even the real issue at play here.
It's really simple to me. People put their money in the bank. The bank couldn't bear to watch the pile of money just sitting there. So it "invested" the money. Then it lost the money. Then they went under. Now everybody is losing their minds and the bank is getting liquidated in an attempt to make everybody whole again.
I'm sorry but I just don't feel any sympathy at all. It's not the first time a bank fails but people never learn not to trust them.
> I swear if it was called “generic bank” instead of “Silicon Valley Bank”, we wouldn’t be seeing all of these knee-jerk “good because they’re bad” responses.
Nope. I say the exact same thing every single time some bank-like institution fails: we warned you. When it's some crypto exchange, everybody here on HN gets a kick out of it. Now that it's some startup's bank, I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? No.
> Do you have an actual argument that falsifies what I've said? I'm all about owning up to my mistakes but right now I have no reason to believe I'm being stupid.
There are two key things that I think you're misunderstanding:
1) the bank didn't lose the money. A lot of it is locked up in long-term securities that would have to be sold at a loss to access the money now. But, at maturity, all of the money would be paid back. The money is there, but it's illiquid. A bank with the same investment but more liquid assets would have no problem
2) The investors are going to get screwed, and the depositors will likely be made most of the way whole. This is without a government bailout. Given that the assets are there, I'd be surprised if a big bank didn't gobble them up for the goodwill of future tech unicorns.
I'd be upset if there was an investor bailout. I'd question why we needed a depositor bailout. I don't think either are necessary or going to happen
> 1) the bank didn't lose the money. A lot of it is locked up in long-term securities that would have to be sold at a loss to access the money now. But, at maturity, all of the money would be paid back. The money is there, but it's illiquid. A bank with the same investment but more liquid assets would have no problem
Also known as being literally insolvent. They can't pay back what they owe. People have bills to pay tomorrow, so nobody really cares that the money is gonna be there 10 years from now. Peopld want their money, and the bank can't pay it back. They might as well have taken the money and thrown it into a black hole.
> 2) The investors are going to get screwed, and the depositors will likely be made most of the way whole. This is without a government bailout. Given that the assets are there, I'd be surprised if a big bank didn't gobble them up for the goodwill of future tech unicorns.
I suppose it's moral as long as not one cent of public money is used to pay anyone off. That includes "backstopping" bank runs or whatever it is the Fed does. That also includes literally any measure that could conceivably increase inflation which is an indirect way of making us all pay for it.
Also known as being literally insolvent. They can't pay back what they owe.
No, insolvency is a legal and accounting term indicating that liabilities exceed assets. If assets and liabilities are equal, but the liquidity of those assets did not match the term of the liabilities., that is illiquidity, not insolvency.
That being said, the CFPI said in its order shutting down SVB that the bank was both illiquid and insolvent so it appears that their assets, even adjusted for value at maturity, were not sufficient to cover liabilities. And that's probably why the banks they reached out to about taking over SVB Thursday night did not.
> They might as well have taken the money and thrown it into a black hole.
It entirely depends on the circumstances, and those circumstances are extremely important to this discussion. A bank with sufficient liquidity wouldn't have a solvency issue holding these assets - they would exist and be paid out in time, and nobody would no the difference but the bank's accountants.
That is extremely important because it means the money exists - it was not lost. That makes purchasing SVB viable for a bank that can handle the securities' long maturity. That would not be the case if they head actually lost the money.
> That also includes literally any measure that could conceivably increase inflation which is an indirect way of making us all pay for it.
I would encourage you to read about Spain's economy during the late 1500s. Specifically, why they were advertising across Europe to convince Jews to move to Spain - you'll get to learn why the Jewish banker stereotype exists (racism meets fiscal policy meets religious doctrine) and see an interesting example of how a society changes with proto-moderm banking introduced.
In my experience, most proponents of "inflation is theft" propose financial systems that fail to account for critical problems that were addressed in modern finance so long ago that they've been mostly forgotten
> In my experience, most proponents of "inflation is theft" propose financial systems that fail to account for critical problems that were addressed in modern finance so long ago that they've been mostly forgotten
Sounds interesting. Please elaborate on these problems. It's definitely gonna be a lot more interesting than discussing a failed bank.
As far as I'm concerned, the main problem solved by banks is the exponential growth problem. They solve it by providing credit, enabled by depositors. Entire nations and empires were developed by this scheme. Especially in the 1500s, the age of european colonialism.
> Sounds interesting. Please elaborate on these problems. It's definitely gonna be a lot more interesting than discussing a failed bank.
Lol, fair. In the 1500s, Christians and Muslim were barred from giving loans with usury (interest), so there was no financial incentive to give anyone but friends and family money. The European aristocracy was either Christian or Muslim (Portugal and Spain for a while). Essentially, if you weren't already well connected to the rich, you couldn't access capital.
Jews didn't face the same religious restrictions, and they were barred from many other jobs in society, so they often fell into the role of bankers where they lived (since they could charge interest and make money). These banks facilitated wealth transfers between the wealthy and people with few means and connections. It resulted in economic booms (and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of exponential growth), but it spread the wealth to people who wouldn't have otherwise had access.
And that's the double edged sword: loans can facilitate wealth transfer from wealthy to folks with limited means, but doing that causes inflation.
Rich people have since found tons of ways to manipulate the system, and we've added layers of regulation that are supposed to make that harder. Some of that has worked, and some of that has failed. But, I do think that inflation is a necessary side effect of preventing capital from being hoarded in walled gardens
>It's likely startups only exist to begin with due to low federal interest rates.
This is true for some startups. Not true for others. There’s some nuance. Painting them altogether loses the nuance.
> It is obvious that if those rates are low investors will look elsewhere. Startups are one of those elsewheres.
I agree.
> Now that rates are on the way up, there's no need for investors to risk their money on startups anymore. So startups no longer have one of the pre-conditions for their existence. Namely, free investor money literally pouring in and paying for all their expenses.
Again, some investors won’t spend as much of their money investing in startups. You talk as if it’s just a single on/off switch.
> Such is life in the free market. Looks like the US government disrupted you.
We’re talking about the startups here. The government “disrupted” the bank. And through no fault of their own, the startups get “disrupted” as a second order effect. My main point and the reason that I felt I should respond is this sense that I get from your comment that somehow startups deserved to lose their money because they kept it at the bank. As if that was the morally just conclusion.
> I thought stuff like this was going to happen the second I saw the Fed raising interest rates to combat inflation. Looks like time proved me right.
Yes. Everyone understood that “stuff like this” would happen. I’m positive that you didn’t know that specifically SVB would go under in such fashion. Without using hindsight bias, what should a startup have done with this knowledge that “stuff like this” would happen?
> Yeah sure. A "minor implementation detail" of the bank... Honestly, this isn't even the real issue at play here.
I said “internal” not “minor”. And I mean, yes it is the real issue at play? It’s what caused them to go under? And was absolutely not something that any reasonable person would expect to know about their financial institution…
> It's really simple to me. People put their money in the bank. The bank couldn't bear to watch the pile of money just sitting there. So it "invested" the money. Then it lost the money. Then they went under. Now everybody is losing their minds and the bank is getting liquidated in an attempt to make everybody whole again.
Missing nuance that they invested in something that is seen as about the most safe thing you can invest in, but they DID mess up with the duration. Again, this is something that the bank messed up that no reasonable(non-financial industry) person could have seen coming. Sure, the bank deserves some blame for this, but the people that kept their money there could not have reasonably seen the risk.
> I'm sorry but I just don't feel any sympathy at all. It's not the first time a bank fails but people never learn not to trust them.
“Don’t trust banks”. Ok. Got it. Now what? Without using hindsight bias, what should a startup have done with $10million? Keep it under their mattress? Invest it in something more risky than treasuries?
> Nope. I say the exact same thing every single time some bank-like institution fails: we warned you.
Noted. Now what?
> When it's some crypto exchange, everybody here on HN gets a kick out of it. Now that it's some startup's bank, I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? No.
You’re comparing losing your money by gambling on something with no intrinsic value, in an unregulated market, that was built primarily as a means of subverting oversight, with keeping your money in a highly respected, highly regulated, FDIC insured bank.
That said, I hope people weren’t HAPPY that crypto HOLDERS lost their money.
> We’re talking about the startups here. The government “disrupted” the bank. And through no fault of their own, the startups get “disrupted” as a second order effect.
Same thing. It's still disruption even when it's indirect. Perhaps they should have chosen to minimize their exposure to that risk. For whatever reason, they didn't. Now these are the consequences.
I don't want to hear that they're getting any government help whatsoever. By all means liquidate the bank and then distribute the money. If that's not enough to pay them back... Tough luck.
> My main point and the reason that I felt I should respond is this sense that I get from your comment that somehow startups deserved to lose their money because they kept it at the bank. As if that was the morally just conclusion.
Let me make it clear then: that's exactly what I belive.
Banks are not the "risk free safe haven" people make them out to be. People treating banks like that are a huge problem that I wish would be fixed. One way to fix it is by destroying the illusion that you're "safe" despite all the risks the banks are exposing you to. The easiest way to destroy that illusion is to have people actually lose their money when their bank fails.
Therefore, that's what I wish would happen.
> I’m positive that you didn’t know that specifically SVB would go under in such fashion.
I know with absolute certainty that any given bank could literally flop at any given moment if enough people tried to withdraw their cash at the same time. The only reason why it doesn't happen often in practice is the government will literally print money and "inject liquidity" into them to stop a total economic meltdown from happening. I'd rather they didn't and just allowed banks to fail.
> Without using hindsight bias, what should a startup have done with this knowledge that “stuff like this” would happen?
Not keeping money at the bank would be a start. At least use many independent banks so you're not exposed to the stupidity of any one bank.
> And I mean, yes it is the real issue at play? It’s what caused them to go under?
If we're talking about the bank's failure, yes. It's not relevant at all if we're talking about the startup that relied on the bank to hold their money for them.
> And was absolutely not something that any reasonable person would expect to know about their financial institution…
Well, I sure as hell do expect to know everything my bank is doing. After all, I'm putting my money in there and they're "managing" it. One of my banks sends all clients a detailed written report about their accounts and investments every year. Others don't so I ask the manager what they're doing with my money instead. I will literally pull my money out if I don't like the answer. I've done it more than once.
> Missing nuance that they invested in something that is seen as about the most safe thing you can invest in
That's intentional on my part. What they "thought" or "intended" to happen doesn't matter at all. "Everybody thought" mortgage backed securities were a safe investment back then too and that common sense doesn't count for shit when everyone is getting wiped out.
> no reasonable(non-financial industry) person could have seen coming
> but the people that kept their money there could not have reasonably seen the risk
Sure they could. Literally every bank exposes you to the risk of their fractional reserve banking. The problem is they don't because they don't understand the nature of banks and what they do. People think it's just "their money at the bank".
That's ultimately what I want: for people to start seeing government and bank screwups coming. Telling them does nothing so maybe losing money will.
I think this is the sort of stuff that should be taught to everyone in schools.
> what should a startup have done with $10million?
> Invest it in something more risky than treasuries?
What do you think banks do when you deposit $10M in them?
> You’re comparing losing your money by gambling on something with no intrinsic value, in an unregulated market, that was built primarily as a means of subverting oversight, with keeping your money in a highly respected, highly regulated, FDIC insured bank.
Those two things are pretty much the same scam to me. One is "respected and government backed", the other isn't. Maybe the government should start backing the proto-banks we call exchanges too. Wouldn't that be funny?
> That said, I hope people weren’t HAPPY that crypto HOLDERS lost their money.
Sorry to disappoint you. If you think this comments section is bad, you should see how gleefully the HN folks cheer when the "crypto bros" get fucked by some whale dumping on the market or something.
Putting the money in SVB rather than another bank can be seen as a poor business decision by the startups - yes, they may have be forced to by their VC backers, or they may be just following the crowd
But reality is SVB isn’t a normal bank and it had the highest percentage of deposited funds that weren’t covered by FDIC amongst US banks
You say I'm "ridiculous" and "detached from reality" yet the economy pretty much screeched to a halt when the Fed rased interest rates. The money stopped flowing freely, the massive layoffs began... Now we have literal banks failing. Yeah.
Nothing screeched to a halt. Money stopped flowing as freely as it once did. The layoffs are relatively massive, but the companies involved are still enormous organizations. Things have slowed down, and things are fraying at the edges, but the economy is still largely fine. This is the intended outcome of the present monetary policy.
I'm just a Regular Joe, and I have saving and chequing accounts at two banks in case there's an account discrepancy / disagreement with one, I still have some funds I can pay bills with until things get sorted out. Stuff happens:
Exactly this point. Every single offering brochure on those business checking accounts notes the FDIC limit. If they’re interest checking accounts, they are money market backed and clearly state no guaranteed return rate or even guarantee of capital. Heck, even my not savvy mother knows to keep her money market retirement accounts in different banks just like you describe.
How can we possibly allow the CFO of these companies to get away with not managing finance risk, no matter how small. That was their only job, to manage finance risk. No business continuity insurance? Lines of credit with other banks? Convertible instruments that could be sold on Monday AM to raise cash? So many other ways a CFO can manage cash and risk but did not.
SVB had no Chief Risk Officer for much of 2022 at all, which they failed to disclose. The previous one left in a hurry after selling $4m worth of stock, along with the CEO.
We're not talking about SVB: we're talking about the customers of SVB.
If you're a not-small company (many dozens of people, which a few million in assets), why would you put all your financial eggs in one basket? Even if they're generally well-run, any institution can be hit with 'bad luck' like ransomware by some zero-day.
Just by having (say) one-quarter of your assets at another institution it makes sure you can make payroll and pay your bills for some period of time while things are sorted out at the 'primary'.
The issue is it wasn't pension money. It was VC money, that's money intentionally being gambled in high risk endeavors. It's not right for thr tax payers to bail out rich VCs who gambles their money.
On the flip side, I also have worked in startups much of my career, and think I and people like me should be paid for our work. I think we should help the startups out, bail them out, but without helping the VCs. I think what that means is the startups effected should get their money back, but the VC owned shares of the company then become government assets that can be sold in the future to offset the cost of the buyout.
It's simply not right for government money to bail them out, but fornthe VCs to profit from it years from now.
Edited to add:
In the end the point I'm trying to make is that it's not right for us to take money from average non-rich Americans to pay back VCs (rich americans) who gambled their money. If the bailout comes from people that earn more than 500k a year exclusively then I'm all for it. But taking public money that was taken from a single mom who is barely getting by to do so is wrong.
> It was VC money, that's money intentionally being gambled in high risk endeavors.
The high risk endeavor does not have anything to do with the bank where you deposit the money raised. Here, it does not matter if the source of money is a VC or another.
This is a foolish take, because it ignores the thousands of workers who distinctly aren't high rollers. It's hard for me to see the moral difference between 'public workers pension fund' and 'workers trying to feed their families, who happen to work at a startup'
I also work at a startup. I have for much of my career.
I said in my OP that my view is that the startups themselves should be bailed out, saving jobs like yours and mine. The VCs should then forfeit their shares to the US govt, to be sold later, to offset the costs of the bailout.
A run on the bank is a social phenomenon, and "VCs" aren't a singular monolith that acts in concert. The "VCs" didn't want this to happen any more than others.
Regular depositors under $250k also benefit from the upside of their "gamble". Yet we protect their deposits regardless because we want to reduce the systemic risk of bank runs.
Right so when you say "But they benefit from the upside. It's their gamble, not ours." ... Your first sentence is talking about the deposit, then you switch the subject matter and start talking about a VC's equity in their investment? Everything you've written in this thread sounds like morality-laden, anger-laden, fist in the air kind of stuff, where you're criticising your own confusion and using loaded terms in order to push a point. Nothing well reasoned. I'm done here.
> The issue is it wasn't pension money. It was VC money, that's money intentionally being gambled in high risk endeavors. It's not right for thr tax payers to bail out rich VCs who gambles their money.
Putting your startup's funds in a FDIC insured bank isn't exactly "gambling".
It is if you have funds over the FDIC limit. There are services that take care of that for you, there are many standard practices that exist to protect against this, all were ignored.
I dislike these populist, low resolution takes that use rhetorical devices ("gambled" instead of "invested") to try to persuade but are otherwise void of well-reasoned analysis and are more about criticising one's own confusion.
If you want something to be justifiably upset about, it's the carried interest loophole.
You've learned wrong, VC is by definition a category of investments and you attempting to relabel it as gambling is an attempt to persuade via rhetorical device rather than via sound argument.
"Limited partner", someone who invests in a partnership without having day-to-day management control (IIRC). In the case of VCs, many of the limited partners are pension funds or other giant players who want to invest a small fraction of their assets in higher-risk, higher return securities. (The LPs probably have other assets invested in lower-risk, lower-return assets.)
I second your point and add: what's at stake here is not just SVB's customers, but the reputation of the entire US Banking system.
The shareholders should lose all of their investment, that is a no-brainer, but the depositors should not lose 1 penny, and their funds be available on Monday morning.
Here's an overlooked deadline: 6:00 PM EST, that is when Sydney (Australia)'s stock market opens. If that opens a lot lower, it will be the start of a free-fall cascade of stock markets worldwide.
So, we have less than 5 hours as of this writing for an official FDIC/Federal Reserve statement.
> but the reputation of the entire US Banking system
Agreed. Advanced economies work because there are things you can take for granted, and you gain efficiencies from that. There are plenty of countries where the currency collapses every decade and banks don't work well. None one looks up to them, no one aspires to start a business there, and they're not leaders in anything other than maybe a commodity. They're places smart people leave.
>>People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money
I got no dog in this fight(as I'm an Indian, and stay in India). But I guess what they are saying is they don't want to be paying for it. They just want whoever is responsible to make somebody else pay for these problems.
So bailout is ok, they just don't want to pay for it, and may be find other people(VCs, other billionaires) who can invest/bailout that bank on their terms.
> People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money because our CEO used a well-reputed bank?
I'm in the same position as you but this is a terrible take.
No one thinks we deserve to lose money or jobs.
They simply do not believe that other American taxpayers who likely make less than you should have to spend their hard earned money (or risk having it devalued by printing) in order to bail you out.
And they are broadly correct.
It is wrong to demand other people's money due to your own misfortune, especially when the misfortune is a lost business or job, versus something more existential. The reality is that most tech workers will be fine.
> People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money because our CEO used a well-reputed bank?
If you want to be paid by the government, you should be aware that salaries are significantly lower, and perks are non-existent.
The government regulates banks and provides deposit insurance to to 250K.
The whole point of deposit insurance is to prevent retail bank runs by the general public.
Beyond that, it is the job of your CFO to manage risks, including the risk bank failure.
The last large wave of bank failures happened barely over a decade ago. These things happen.
Also, it sounds like your company will lose at most a fraction of its deposits.
> They [shareholders] deserve nothing, because that's what you should end up with if you own stock in a company that goes bankrupt.
During a bankruptcy creditors get paid first, and investors are only allowed access to what is left after creditors are paid off. Hopefully a company declares bankruptcy before their total liabilities becomes larger than their total assets, otherwise creditors cannot be paid in full.
Bank bailouts were largely done so banking services are not disrupted. As valuable as SVB was to startups, it's small potatoes to what 2007/2008 bailouts prevented. "Too big to fail" clearly doesn't apply here.
HN has grown a lot and there are much more people who are not necessarily from SV.
In the real world, if you live in SF, work in startups doing what you like, get paid well, not trapped in 9-5 etc.
That's elite and nobody will ever feel sorry for you. As a general rule every guy should always expect nobody to feel sorry for them, but this particular set of circumstances and the area of the country where they unfolded scream 'millionaires problems' to those roaming in the interwebz.
At the expense of taxpayers. That is the crux of the argument.
People are stressing the 250k FDIC requirement which is Federal and thus equal for everybody and it's one of the very few things that is equal for everybody across the land regardless of you living in Mobile, AL or San Jose, CA.
People are against the extra-insurance/safery-net/bailout being awarded to everything based in NYC and SF because everything in NYC and SF is supposedly too big and too important to fail. In this case it's not even failure but a minor inconvenience because as it stands the money is there, it's only tied up.
First of all, the FDIC has always arranged to make depositors whole when banks failed. This is why there weren’t massive runs on bank checking and savings accounts in 2008.
Second, CA gets the least back in federal spending per dollar of taxes paid, and NY is close:
The regions most upset about federal safety nets are also the ones that benefit the most from them.
Third, it is not a minor inconvenience when $10M’s of investor money from a fundraising round gets permanently lowered to $250K (no “bailout”) or if a startup stops making payroll for 2 years (upper bound of the time range the FDIC has proposed).
> > Second, CA gets the least back in federal spending per dollar of taxes paid, and NY is close
State by State statistics are irrelevant considering that people who are getting up in arms are small business owners and entrepreneurs who will never receive a bailout because considered not structurally important or not big enough. And yes on a percentage basis there are more of them in flyover America, but just because flyover America States get more federal funds doesn't mean that contractors for such goods and servies are based there at all.
Plus a contract with the Govt. for a good or service to be provided is way different than a bailout. In one instance it's the Govt. acting as a customer, in the other it's the Govt. coming to the rescue to save businesses from bad outcomes.
> > Third, it is not a minor inconvenience when $10M’s of investor money from a fundraising round gets permanently lowered to $250K (no “bailout”) or if a startup stops making payroll for 2 years (upper bound of the time range the FDIC has proposed).
On a systemic level it's a minor inconvenience because the name of the game of a country is to build cool products and services in order to consume them, somebody else will have a try at building a cool product or service and those who were banking with SVB will still have all the means to consume them (which in the end is what really matters) thanks to the FDIC
And besides, get real, 99% of people will never see 250k lump sum being credited on a bank account they control (either corporate or personal) , much less a 10M lump sum which is 99.999 percentile territory, which brings me back to my OP point:
Nobody will ever feel sorry for people who live in the 'top right' area of the chart of life. Or they will but there should not be absolutely any money involved. As an example people will feel sorry for a fighter jet pilot involved in an accident during training even though the guy spent his whole life living the dream flying above the cloud and the sound barrier.
This is the state of the art. Plain and simple. As evidenced by the honors given to the fallen pilot and the insults and spits thrown in the direction of those who are receiving the bailouts.
Call it a reasoning defect, logical fallacy, whatever, I don't care. It's the state of the art, as evidenced by people reactions. So if you are so disturbed by other people indifference, stop (or alternatively never try) raising (and dealing) money but get a cool job giving you mad emotions and away from the limelight of the financial press and the corporate board room, that way you'll never have anything to worry about as it pertains to pitchforks and social hatred.
It’s more subtle, because these startups exist due to VC investment. Those VCs probably recommended and even set up their portfolio startups with SVB accounts. And a high percentage of these companies were heading to failure due to the nature of these ventures. I’m not so sure taxpayers should be responsible here.
Why don’t VCs double down and make their investees whole? They’re the ones who bankroll and believe in these ideas, and stand to make 1000x profits in their successful exits.
I wonder how much of this saltiness -- both on HN, reddit, and mainstream media -- is due solely to the name of the bank.
If the headline was "California Regional Mutual Bank and Trust fails" (I made up the name, I don't know anything about banking, don't nitpick the terms) it surely would have still been newsworthy because of the size of the bank, but I suspect there would be less vitriol around the situation with the Silicon Valley connotation removed from it.
If your startup doesn't survive having only 50% in the bank account for one week and then 80-90% in the following weeks (appears to be the most likely outcome without any government money) it likely isn't viable to begin with (in a normal, non-zero interest environment). I think the believe that startups have to always be on the brink of bankruptcy is misleading because it worked in the last decade of endless money and in winner-take all industries. At this point I believe that "Blitzscaling" is a zero-sum game and that most value is created by non winner-takes all companies that grow steadily. It seems analogous to aerodynamic friction, the faster you try to go the less far you will be able to go with a certain amount of energy/money
This is a strange strawman argument. The GP and parent comment you responded to are specifically referring to this sentiment:
> “Depositors shouldn’t get anything beyond the insured $250,000”.
What startup normally only has $500,000 in the bank?
Anyway, cashflow can matter a lot. For instance, people that sell stuff on etsy might not be paid on time because of this. That creates a lot of customer uncertainty.
Also, I can imagine a lot of B2B startup customers are looking for second sources all of a sudden.
The person you’re replying to is referring to a well-founded rumor that depositors will receive 50% of the uninsured deposits beyond the 250k minimum this coming week and that SVB has assets worth at least 80% of all deposits, which will be recovered in time.
No. People don't want you to get special treatment. Your firm should have insurance to cover the deposits over 250K, or split the money across several banks. It didn't as such it should deal with the consequences. Which are it may not get all of its deposits back.
When a building company, building my house goes bust. The government doesn't step in to get someone to finish building it. When I order goods from a company and it goes bust, the government doesn't step in to ensure I get my goods.
> just because of their choice of financial institution
There’s a moral hazard to all choices made in business. Making a choice based on insufficient due diligence is a hazard. Chasing higher rewards at higher risk is a hazard. Are you saying the government should indemnify businesses for their choices?
My understanding is that SVB avoided some restrictions placed on other banks. It’s not clear to me the why’s and wherefor’s of this but there are only two options. Either malfeasance on the part of SVB, or ignorance/risk-taking on the part of the customers.
The scahdenfreude I believe comes because it’s assumed many customers would be from the “this time it’s different” school of business, in which case there’s a lesson akin to caveat emptor begging to be learnt.
> People here are effectively suggesting that I shouldn't get my paycheck and that the company I work for should lose most of its money because our CEO used a well-reputed bank?
I am suggesting that your CEO not adequately insuring the companies bank deposit is negligent. If your CEO does not insure your HQ against fire, and it burns down, should it be bailed out by the government just so that you're not out of a job? Or is it not their fault that the CEO didn't use a "well-reputed landlord with adequate fire suppression?"
The proper call should be to increase FDIC insurance to 10mil or something then. It is incredibly unfair to be saying that depositors here deserve to be made whole because they are startup companies that somehow matter more to the economy.
Everyone agrees that shareholders and bondholders should we wiped out. Everyone agrees that deposits under 250k can and will be made whole due to FDIC. The disagreement if there is one is the 250k+, why should there be an exception just because these are tech startups?
I absolutely agree the FDIC limit should go way up.
> The disagreement if there is one is the 250k+, why should there be an exception just because these are tech startups?
That's not what I'm suggesting, nor is it what I think most people who think depositors should be made whole are suggesting. In basically any bank run scenario in which depositors had behaved reasonably (which is like 99% of companies putting their money in banks), I would support depositors being made whole. Regardless of the specifics of the situation, I think the upside of maintaining our collective faith that bank deposits are safe is much larger than the downside of whatever needs to be done to achieve that.
The anger is coming from citizens who are being asked to bail you out when they are already stretched to their financial limits and any such idea will surely make inflation go up.
Sorry to hear about your situation I really am. I'm personally in the camp that we as a collective country have made bad fiscal choices knowingly or unknowingly. It's time to start paying for these choices and stop looking to others else we drown in these bad choices.
I'm beginning to wonder if a lot of the posters to these kind of thins are just young. When I was 25 I thought I had well-reasoned and insightful opinions, and I certainly had forceful opinions. But I had no depth of knowledge in things like finance and politics, and thus, had no way of knowing how much I didn't know. A few years ago I watched Ian Shapiro's lectures on "Politics in the Modern World" (a course from Yale, developed from a request to help explain the rise of Trump). I realized that I thought I had insightful opinions, but really it was just rubbish because I had no understanding of political science, recent history, or even different forms of government and their different failings.
I also felt differently about money when I was 25, because obviously I didn't have any. There was no way I could have any, because I had only been working for a few years (and junior devs were paid a lot less in those days). It seems like it would have been easy to be jealous of rich people at 25. Or just jealous of startup-employees who, judging by HN posts (/s), are all making 400k/year. In fact, I think some HN posts have claimed junior dev salaries more than what I was making after 20 years in the industry, which I could see might lead to some jealousy. Particularly if combined with a lack of perspective.
I think I lean towards you, but what people are actually suggesting is that these startups shouldn't be bailed out when they went with a bank with super-high promised rates, while they of course knew their deposits over $250k were uninsured.
I haven’t heard anything about high rates being the primary thing drawing people to SVB. The trap seems to have been giving startups access to credit that other banks would not provide, but only if you agree to do all your banking with SVB. That, and also several big VCs that required their portfolio companies to bank there. These things are what herded everyone into the building before it caught fire.
This was a rare event when, for once, elites would learn that it's possible to do everything right and still fail catastrophically due to systemic factors. This has been the case for the majority of people over the past decade. The only reason regular people accepted their own situation over the past decade is that they thought "rules are rules." But no, rules are not rules, it turns out. Only plebs need to take the consequences of silly or unjust rules. The elites are immune to unjust rules. When a pesky inconvenient rule affects the elites, it can simply be waived away.
Why did I have to learn my lesson about the flawed system and the acceptance of tough luck, but politically-connected people didn't?
What we have today is a 2-class society.
It's the word of law above all... Unless you're politically connected; then suddenly the word of law yields to common sense.
It comes from the way lower class Americans are treated. The hardship that might be ahead for some otherwise extremely rich and privileged people is actually far less than befalls tens of millions of lower class Americans every single day, and choosing a “move fast and break things” bank is actually a far less “unfair” reason than, say, the circumstances of your birth. The vicious, lifelong message from mainstream society to those most in need has always been “nobody owes anybody anything, that would be socialism”. That’s why those people are angry to see people far better off receive help just because “not doing it would be unfair and hurt them”.
The problem is that the valley culture wants it both ways. It is a largely libertarian, rules-breaking environment. They want to ignore laws and decry regulations while at the same time having the government step in and bail them out whenever anything goes against them.
I, too, have worked for startups much of my life. Sometimes you show up for work one day and the doors are locked because the place is done. It is part of the deal. There are lots of reasons this can occur - hey, we just couldn't close another round, the economy hit a speed bump, etc. 2008 happened. Worldcom and Cable and Wireless just declared bankruptcy and they were our lead customers. etc. It is part of the startup cycle.
If something like this this had managed to kill AirBnb, Uber and Lyft before they did the damage they did, the world would be better off.
YEARS of disinformation about "Personal Responsibility" and not a lot of critical thinking in the interim. I'm not specifically talking about the parent comment.
Your point is sound and seems obvious to me. I also spent several years studying and fighting coordinated inauthentic content its effects on the brain. Whether coordinated or not, hearing the same message over and over again gets internalized such that it becomes reflexive to parrot.
What happens when you give every single high school senior $1000 scholarship to read Ayn Rand? What happens in a society when hyper-capitalists, their politicians, and their media narratives leave no room to consider things that are beautiful and human? What happens when STEM education starves all of the humanities of oxygen?
If it isn't this, I don't know what it is, but we're all about to find out.
It's coming from the same system that probably led you to work at Startups your whole career. High risk for high reward on a lightly regulated capitalist system. If your CEO or CFO put all the money in one risky bank, it was bad financial management.
Is this correct then? : SVP gives easy credit to VC friends. VC friends use that credit as investment in startups who are told they must use SVP. So money moves from magic-money-printer -> SVP -> VC -> Startup -> SVP. Then SVP takes those deposits and invests it elsewhere. Now they are making money from loan to VC and reinvestment of those same monies that are deposited back.
So a bank like SVP seems designed to enable VCs with easy credit to de-facto control an important (and balooning) niche of the economy and by their control over the beauty pageant of which startup idea gets money (and PR) they also control what kind of technology becomes dominant. (For example, these VCs share significant credit/blame for creating the surveillance tech. They share blame for creating an engineering culture that must serve full throttle growth business models. etc.)
Is there a social graph of SVP and VCs involved? Are these people pals, friends, "effective" ideologues, etc.?
> VC friends use that credit as investment in startups who are told they must use SVP.
Maybe, but I was talking specifically about startups themselves being given loans by SVB then requiring the startup to bank there. But I am sure investors also pushed startups to SVB... if your investor (who maybe is highly invested in SVB ... ) says "you should use this bank" are you going to say no? The pressure is immense.
> Is there a social graph of SVP and VCs involved? Are these people pals, friends, "effective" ideologues, etc.?
I use an FDIC-insured bank. My deposits are under the limit for insurance. I don’t care about its deposit base or asset allocation because that’s the point of deposit insurance: to make retail depositors feel secure.
On the other hand, a CFO with millions in cash is a professional whose job is to manage corporate risk. A competent CFO needs to account for things like bank failures, which do happen.
If you raise $1.2M… you're going to tell me it's not worth your time to frigging walk to 5 banks and open accounts to make sure that money is safely stored?
For something you can't afford to lose, you sure fon't seem to be treating it that way.
Yes. If you manage $1.2M you need to be smart enough about managing it, or have some smart people advising you. I don't manage $1.2M yet I know there's a limit on FDIC insurance. If you manage $1.2M and you don't know that, maybe the people who gave you $1.2M made a mistake.
Sweep accounts are fine, but I’m not sure I’d bother with credit ratings. SVB’s was basically as high as possible even for a few hours after the run started and before they closed:
> When was the last time you went over their deposit base and asset allocation?
A few times but only for a short time and a small percentage of the capital. Was already a full grown adult in 2008, have good memory, and are still licking many old lion financial battle scars...
It wasn't risky as long as prime rate stayed super low.
But that rate has been creeping up for months now.
SVB was too small to qualify for risk assessment under the revised banking rules. So they could get away with money in volatile securities that were very interest rate sensitive.
That said, SVB seemed very solid until Thursday morning.
Only because people weren't asking the right questions.
It's like driving into a parking structure and seeing exposed rebar. It might still be standing now; but if you're smart, you need to find somewhere else to park.
As it was explained to me, the Fed increasing interest rates impacted the value of the bonds held by SVB. As that value contracted SVBs was eventually in trouble.
No. Due to the previous crisis, is one part very well regulated. Here is what should happen...The emphasis below on unlikely is mine...
"A: In the unlikely event of a bank failure, the FDIC responds in two capacities."
"First, as the insurer of the bank's deposits, the FDIC pays insurance to depositors up to the insurance limit. Historically, the FDIC pays insurance within a few days after a bank closing, usually the next business day, by either 1) providing each depositor with a new account at another insured bank in an amount equal to the insured balance of their account at the failed bank, or 2) issuing a check to each depositor for the insured balance of their account at the failed bank....
...In some cases—for example, deposits that exceed $250,000 and are linked to trust documents or deposits established by a third-party broker—the FDIC may need additional time to determine the amount of deposit insurance coverage and may request supplemental information from the depositor in order to complete the insurance determination..."
"Second, as the receiver of the failed bank, the FDIC assumes the task of selling/collecting the assets of the failed bank and settling its debts, including claims for deposits in excess of the insured limit. If a depositor has uninsured funds (i.e., funds above the insured limit), they may recover some portion of their uninsured funds from the proceeds from the sale of failed bank assets. However, it can take several years to sell off the assets of a failed bank. As assets are sold, depositors who had uninsured funds usually receive periodic payments (on a pro-rata "cents on the dollar" basis) on their remaining claim."
> The liabiity issue: extreme reliance on institutional/VC funding rather than traditional retail deposits
> While capital, wholesale funding and loan to deposit ratios improved for many US banks since 2008, there are
exceptions. As shown in the first chart, SIVB was in a league of its own: a high level of loans plus securities as
a percentage of deposits, and very low reliance on stickier retail deposits as a share of total deposits. Bottom
line: SIVB carved out a distinct and riskier niche than other banks, setting itself up for large potential capital
shortfalls in case of rising interest rates, deposit outflows and forced asset sales.
"The liability issue: extreme reliance on institutional/VC funding rather than traditional retail deposits.
...While capital, wholesale funding and loan to deposit ratios improved for many US banks since 2008, there are exceptions. As shown in the first chart, SIVB was in a league of its own: a high level of loans plus securities as a percentage of deposits, and very low reliance on stickier retail deposits as a share of total deposits. Bottom line: SIVB carved out a distinct and riskier niche than other banks, setting itself up for large potential capital shortfalls in case of rising interest rates, deposit outflows and forced asset sales. [Note: This chart appeared in our 2023 Outlook in a discussion on risks related to deposits, rising rates and quantitative tightening]..."
Their SVB Private subsidiary, which is an ordinary consumer bank (people deposit money, bank buys bonds and writes mortgages) is still in good shape and will probably be snapped up by a bigger bank in the next few dya.
I agree there are a lot of poorly thought out populist arguments for not making depositors whole. I for one prefer HN to not converge into another social forum like Reddit that has a lack of critical thinking in discussions.
I’m getting paid below market rate, I’m the sole provider, and I have two children in preschool. So while you chortle over “tech bros,” I’m looking at the end of my family’s healthcare and financial stability.
When everyone around you looks like an asshole, you might be the asshole.
And I wish you absolutely the best in finding a new job. Your salary will be paid even if the company goes bankrupt, and while times will be hard, I have no doubt you will find something.
I am, indeed, an absolute asshole. But then again, my post only said something about finding it funny, not that I'm not an asshole. Nor does it preclude people participating in the clown show from being clowns.
This comment sounds very harsh on first reading but I'm having trouble finding anything actually incorrect about it ... I just pray this doesn't hit the wider economy.
It overlooks everyone who is just starting out, everyone employed at these companies that isn't making techbro salary like the receptionists, custodial staff, QA, workers on visas, whatever.
Simple fantasies for simple minds, no different than lazy racism or any other form of bigotry.
Indeed, for that extremely minor part of companies that about noone on HN has ever cared about, except when it becomes practical to use them, it's troublesome. But since there still exists hundreds of billions of dollars ready to be wasted on bullshit endeavours,I have no doubt they will all find jobs soon in the next cloud cat feeder startup.
Your mind immediately equating good old schadenfreude with lazy racism is indeed telling, but I'll refrain from saying anything, Americans have never been excellent at either context or nuance.
In any case, schadenfreude typically falls into one of three categories: justice, rivalry or aggression. The OP sounds like they are experiencing the justice aspect- that these people who contribute so little are now enduring hardship.
The problem is that "these people" is just another lazy stereotype- it is just another form of aggression; equating everyone who is hurt here as "easy jobs that can easily be replaced" is not unlike assuming everyone living in a ghetto neighborhood is a thug.
The effects and scope of harm of the stereotype may be different, but both come from the same mental state of mind- these people are other, they don't live like I think they should, and they get what they deserve, despite the fact that the "they" in the sentiment is not representative of the people harmed by it.
Your company is the equity holder. You loosing last months paycheck is no different than what happens in the rest of the country any time an employer declares insolvency.
Also, I don't think people in SV appreciate how much rancor and resentment their behavior has generated in the last fifteen years.
> What would happen if this happened to an employer's bank in Indiana?
Literally the same thing would happen, and people wouldn't be making such a big deal about it being a handout to greedy convenience store owners who didn't perform exhaustive diligence on the bank up the street.
Sounds like people cant distinguish between bad actors and actions and the technology sector at large.
It also sounds like they can't distinguish between their own failings (in terms of personal behavior and bad government) and the failings of businesses.
Another thing to mention is that US Dollar is still world's reserve currency. Bailout (or government aids) could lead to unpredictable things. Last time Bitcoin was invented... This time I can't really imagine what would happen. Since entry barrier to Finance has became very low... Even I myself, became decentralised finance expert... I can't really imagine what would happen if this thing can't really managed well....
How is it your money? It's not a taxpayer funded bailout, the FDIC is just going to forcibly liquidate SVB's assets and pay back customers to the extent possible with those proceeds.
FDIC receivership is not my money, it’s all self funded. Any bailout beyond that is taxpayer money. As a voter (and a guy who pays taxes) it is my money. I have a lot of opinions about how that money should be spent.
A bailout beyond FDIC receivership is simply a payout to VCs. SVB’s resolution will be a solid measure of much political clout they have.
That didn’t have an investment grade rating, where $250k comes out of taxpayer coffers Monday morning, and where everyone has unemployment insurance? Yes.
The assets of the bank should go to your company first. But the public purse should not be opened.
> isn't coming out of taxpayer coffers. FDIC insurance premiums are paid by the banks
Fair enough. The FDIC is funded by premiums but backstopped by the Treasury. There is no private insurance function that pays out at this scale the next business day.
I just don’t understand why folks on the internet are so passionate about the depositors being hit by this. In terms of avoiding moral hazard they are about as far down the list as possible, and bankruptcy law supports that.
First stock holders get wiped out (common then preferred), then debt holders (folks who have lent money to SVB won’t get their money back), only then would it hit depositors - and in the case of a traditional bank it usually wouldn’t hit them hard since most funds are FDIC insured.
I can imagine being incensed about stockholders and debt holders being made whole, if that were to happen - since then people would learn the wrong lesson here. But nobody think that’s going to happen.
If depositors aren’t protected, then it’s going to have a lot of downstream impacts (people won’t make payroll, and employees who have no responsibility won’t get paid). And again, it’s not like folks who chose were gambling with a shady bank to get high interest rates, in many ways SVB was considered the least risky and most conservative bank to use as a startup. At least that’s why we chose it.
The C-suite paid themselves millions of dollars via bonuses and stock sales right before insolvency. Executives got paid. What’s to stop future bankers from running the same playbook? (We can debate that this the stock sale was premeditated/signaled months in advance, but the stock had already declined 80% from its 2021 peak and they surely knew about the tough liquidity position months ago — external observers drew attention to this back in January).
Note, one of the SVB executives was the former Lehman Brothers CFO in 2007, just one year prior to that institution’s collapse in 2008. What did he learn, exactly, besides how to get out in time?
So the play is to use funds on me as the manager instead of depositors. Then depositors get covered and I, the manager, keep my earnings.
It’s not that we punish the depositors but the scheme is set up that depositors suffer.
Imagine the mob stole all that money. It’s not punishing the depositors to not pay them back. The mob punished the depositors by stealing.
If I don’t buy homeowners insurance and some arsonist burns down my house, I’m out $100k to rebuild. Is it punishing me if the government doesn’t bail me out? The government isn’t punishing me, the arsonist punished me.
If we want government coverage then we should enact laws to cover this kind of thing and raise taxes and fees accordingly. We can’t enjoy the benefits of low regulation when it makes us money and then ask for coverage after the fact. After we’ve reaped the benefits of no regulation.
What I’m saying is that the management are in no way impacted by what happens to depositors, these are separate issues.
If you want to stop mismanagement like this don’t repeal banking regulations and instead regulate banks properly, that has nothing to do with that the fed decides to do for depositors to stop contagion and ripple effects in other industries.
And what I’m saying is that managers knew this and paid themselves with funds that could have went to depositors. Depositors have the same right to be made whole as any other victim of a crime.
The government has fdic and insures up to $250k. That’s what our taxes paid for. If we wanted to insure depositors for greater amounts, we would have paid more taxes.
This was an eyes wide open situation. Depositors could have managed their large sums of cash better. They didn’t, choosing to save money. Now it sucks.
Another analogy would be that if a couple skipped life insurance and leased a Porsche. And now the wage earner has been murdered and the remaining spouse is asking the government to pay for their dead spouses wages, while still driving the Porsche.
This wasn’t a crime, it was a bank run because this bank apparently wasn’t great at managing risk and the risk free assets they bought are not as safe as they used to seem when they bought them now that rates have risen substantially, it could (and probably will this week) happen to other banks like First Republic. If the fed dithers today that seems a lot more likely.
EDIT - seems Signature bank has failed as well today, and the Fed has decided to guarantee deposits at both.
>If I don’t buy homeowners insurance and some arsonist burns down my house, I’m out $100k to rebuild. Is it punishing me if the government doesn’t bail me out? The government isn’t punishing me, the arsonist punished me.
The distinction here is that in this metaphor, the bank managers are both the homeowner and the arsonist.
I didn’t say that? I asked, what’s to disincentivize executives if the Fed backstopped all depositors money, now and perhaps in perpetuity? (Forgive me if I misinterpreted your position here. I have also edited this post for clarity.)
Which plan exactly? Yellen specifically said they have no interest in bailing out the bank itself and only care about depositors.
> “Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out . . . and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,” Yellen said on Face the Nation.
> “But we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.”
I think there’s confusion in this thread, as some are advocating that depositors be made fully whole, and some are interpreting Yellen’s comments to mean that’s what will happen.
Other laws, which have nothing to do with depositors and how to treat them. I’m confused as to why you think these two issues are linked.
I would hope these execs are prosecuted and any bonuses clawed back but that would be under the purview of a different agency (sec) not fdic, and is not an immediate concern, whereas a massive financial shock and 100s of companies closing due to lack of funds is.
I think the implication is that if you make depositors take some of the risk then they'll be more proactive in their oversight of their banks' executives. I'm not sure how realistic that assumption is in practice though ...
I’m not a lawyer, but it’s unclear to me - a random internet observer - that anyone performed anything illegal. It strikes me more as a bet gone colossally wrong, basic human mismanagement, capitalism in action, etc.
Aren't the execs in this case losing the vast, vast, vast majority of the money they old in the bank? I haven't seen anything that makes it seem like they're getting out of this unharmed, and especially not at anyone else's expense.
I also don't know how refusing to make depositors whole would disincentivize bas behavior by execs, anyway? Seems like two unrelated issues.
The depositors may have been able to borrow money at excessively favorable terms. For example, the bank lending money to businesses that otherwise would not have been lent to, or lent to at a higher interest rate. Or home mortgages for the business’s employees at lower rates, subsidized by the bank’s mismanagement (taking excess risks).
Actually, yes. Absolutely. Maybe with enough punishment these depositors will stop stuffing the accounts of these fat cats full of cash for them to "invest" and lose everything with.
How many global economic meltdowns do we have to go through before people learn that banks are literally the root cause of so many of society's problems? Depositors aren't being punished enough if they're still buying into this system. They keep feeding the beast and complaining when it eats them.
Every bank exec is a fat cat to some extent. People and businesses need banks no matter what, and they shouldn't be required to do exhaustive due diligence on every bank. This is the whole purpose of regulation; everyone benefits from oversight.
> People and businesses need banks no matter what, and they shouldn't be required to do exhaustive due diligence on every bank.
They're already required to do KYC/AML due dilligence on normal human beings. Why shouldn't they be required to do the same for the banks they trust their fortunes with?
I think the argument is that if I can start a bank and depend on the government to make my depositors whole in the event of a failure, then I can act/invest in a high risk manner to get more yield, while also paying me and my executive team millions in the process. If or when things hit the fan, my depositors are paid, I am paid, and the investors are the collateral.
I don't see how that's relevant. The leadership team at SVB undoubtedly made a bunch of dumb decisions and they deserve to be raked over the coals for that, but there's no need to make the unsupported claim that the executives were looting the place a few days leading up to the collapse.
We can't replay history, but maybe if they had a CRO, they would not be in this mess. They had time to set bonuses, they had time over the past few years to lobby for looser regs, but apparently a CRO was just too much bother.
