Live data from Hacker News

FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

fdic.gov

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#601

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

When the fuck are retail banks going to be ring-fenced away from being able to trade in MBS. They're consistently cancerous to our banking systems.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#602
post #161

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.

When was the last US bank failure where depositors lost money?

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#605
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some family who (with some other partners) founded a small community bank that has grown over the years. They expanded in some areas by buying other small community banks, specifically in areas where there was a big increase in income in the local area (from mineral rights, etc). The smaller banks that they bought were in a situation where suddenly they had large amounts of cash incoming, and customers who wer…

Why is "too much money" a thing? If a bank only wants $100 million in deposits, but customers deposit $150 million, why can't the bank set the extra $50 million to the side and pretend like it doesn't exist until customers want to withdraw it?

Because the customers expected interest and the bank’s investment portfolio can’t provide the necessary return to pay the interest rate they used to attract the customers.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. I'm no expert in finance but even I knew the fed wasn't going to stop raising interest rates because I had the common sense to know the fed would fail to trigger a recession by doing so.

When I set my ‘Hindsight Goggles’ to 100, I too saw that the Fed would keep raising interest after the initial rounds, because unemployment would stay low despite massive layoffs, somehow, and that prices would keep rising. And I am an expert in finance.

There still a war on, inflation wouldn'tve gone down until that ended. And you have to take the temperature of things in your daily life, its like Keynes said, people are driven by the "animal spirit", the market doesn't always (or ever) make sense, you have to get a feel for it and use specific data to support that feeling, not the other way around. Jesus am I the only one taking out more lines of credit with the expectation of an extended period of inflation? If everyone else is doing that (which they should be), the money supply will continue ballooning, the economy will stay strong and unemployment low.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#607
post #161

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.

What is "SVP"?

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#608

An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate): "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021. - As deposits grew, SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!…

> An explainer post [1] connected to that Tweet is something I found extremely informative (assuming it's accurate):

[1] - https://twitter.com/jamiequint/status/1633956163565002752

That tweet is unattributed verbatim from https://www.livemint.com/news/world/explainer-silicon-valley...

[EDIT:] See the thread, it seems that the story may have stolen from the tweet! Pretty shocking for one of India's biggest business publications (and with 2 million Twitter followers).

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#609
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some family who (with some other partners) founded a small community bank that has grown over the years. They expanded in some areas by buying other small community banks, specifically in areas where there was a big increase in income in the local area (from mineral rights, etc). The smaller banks that they bought were in a situation where suddenly they had large amounts of cash incoming, and customers who wer…

At first glance, bank balance sheets are unintuitive and feel 'the wrong way round'. When someone deposits $1m at a bank, the bank doesn't have $1m more assets, it has $1m more liabilities. (Yes, this is a gross over-simplification)

To my mind, although it's in-principle equivalent, the clearer way to think about this is that banks borrow money from depositors and lend that money via loans or investments.

The primary business of a bank is borrowing short and lending long - where short and long refer to the holding time: i.e. taking demand or short-duration term deposits and making mortgage, car and other types of loans.

If you do this badly, you can lose money due to duration risk (you might end up paying more on your demand deposits than your mortgage book is bringing in), but you also have liquidity risks because your depositors can ask for those deposits back faster than you unwind your lending.

If you have both of these occurring at the same time, you're then in severe difficulty, because the only way to repay your depositors is by borrowing money ... which is going to be harder if you look unprofitable ... and that very borrowing can exacerbate the perception of a bank in trouble.

That's basically what happened here.

Re: FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank

#610
post #161

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…

Agreed. Lots of people here in the comments are making assumptions about a system they don't understand. Depositors with > $250k aren't necessarily going to "take a haircut," for the reason you mentioned, plus a few others. Additionally: 1. Any financial advisor who recommended to these startups that they should keep >250k in a regular bank account should be fired. It's totally possible (and regularly done) to spread…

SVB is not a typical regional bank taking deposits from middle-class workers, where most accounts are under the 250k insurance limit.

Banks that primarily serve ordinary workers typically have over 50% of total deposits in accounts that are under the limit, and are fully insured.

But for SVB, less than 3% of deposits are in accounts with less than $250k.

The cold, hard fact is that if the bank doesn't have sufficient assets to pay back depositors, no regulatory sleight of hand changes that fact.

There's a reason why large deposits aren't insured, and that's because the rich have the knowledge and resources to take care of themselves, and shouldn't co-opt the power of the state to force ordinary people to subsidize them when their bets go bad.

It would be hideously immoral to bail out fabulously wealthy VCs with funds from taxpayers and small depositors.

Post reply on HN