Fixes what? An insolvent bank got was taken over by a national authority, all of the deposits were insured, account holders don’t even notice anything happened unless they’re following the news, the banking system doesn’t even skip a beat. This sounds like everything went according to the highly regulated plan.
> all of the deposits were insured
Only up to $250k -- and an overwhelming majority of SVB's deposits were in accounts in excess of this amount.
The regulations that allow a bank to hold long-term fixed-rate bonds backing variable-rate liabilities (since deposit rates float) seems broken. It's straightforward to reckon their exposure to interest rates: they had $90B in 10-year fixed rate bonds, so they lose $9 billion per % of interest increase. They must have known that a 4% increase in interest rates would put them underwater, but they did it (and were allo…
I'm wondering the same thing. The current rise in interest rates must have been a scenario that the bank considered. How can we still have a system that allows situations like this to happen? Other than negligence or malpractice, I cannot fathom a reasonable explanation as to how this happened / was allowed to happen (again).
Disrupt disrupt disrupt! Those old stodgy banks just slow us down with their old-fashioned risk-averse ways! The cool kids can do it better! If I had a nickel for every time I heard this from actual friends in the past couple decades, or for when I said it myself a few times... :)
In fairness, it wasn't the risk-taking that did them in... it was the fact that they went all-in on 10-yr bonds at low interest rates and didn't adequately account for duration risk.
Especially when the fed is telegraphing every move.
I suspect all depositors will be made whole. The bank had a liquidity crisis; it had reserves in excess of its liabilities. Every bank borrows short term (you can walk up and withdraw your money at any time) but lends long (e.g. mortgages, though SVB writes few of those). The recent management grabbed some very long federal bonds; as rates have risen the resale value of those long term assets (paying a lower interest…
DFPI specifically called them insolvent in their release today, does that change your opinion on depositors being made whole?
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Disrupt disrupt disrupt! Those old stodgy banks just slow us down with their old-fashioned risk-averse ways! The cool kids can do it better! If I had a nickel for every time I heard this from actual friends in the past couple decades, or for when I said it myself a few times... :)
But SVB wasn't even doing anything sketchy or disruptive, right?
Correct. They were doing the same thing every other bank was doing, and an unnecessary panic run did them in. Depositors will get their money back because my bet is SVB gets acquired, as their balance sheet was actually fairly healthy (relative to other banks) pre-panic, but it's gonna have ripple effects for sure.
I suspect all depositors will be made whole. The bank had a liquidity crisis; it had reserves in excess of its liabilities. Every bank borrows short term (you can walk up and withdraw your money at any time) but lends long (e.g. mortgages, though SVB writes few of those). The recent management grabbed some very long federal bonds; as rates have risen the resale value of those long term assets (paying a lower interest…
The thing that's strange is FDIC took control and setup a receiving bank for liquidation. That's not normal; FDIC works quite hard to find a bank willing to take over - usually they can work out what the "cost" is to take over, and FDIC pays the receiving bank that amount to "eat" the dying one. If they don't announce they have a bank to assume SVP by Monday, it's quite abnormal.
So what I think is happening here is that if you take over a bank the traditional way, you need to mark-to-market all of the bank's assets -- so all of the losses from the long-dated MBS that would be perfectly fine if held to maturity would have to be recognized immediately, just crushing the balance sheet of anyone who bought it. Probably trying to line someone up who can either absorb that loss, figure out a way to recapitalize without recognizing the loss, or get access to some other lending facility.
What a debacle. Some gallows humor from twitter: "Imagine raising $100m for your AI enabled dog washing app - and your bank sets it on fire before you can". Original: https://twitter.com/88888sAccount/status/1634028258500169731...