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Urgent: Sign the petition now

ycombinator.com

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Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#671

Post by grugagag »

Ekaros wrote: post #348
rytill wrote: post #259

Why not get a loan? Can someone explain what fundamental difficulty there is in taking out a temporary loan to make payroll until the FDIC sorts things out and you make X% of your money back?

Or have a quick funding round. VCs are involved. So they should be happy to provide more funds to great businesses that they surely make massive profits from in future.

Of course they’re not happy. They’re in the business of profit not welfare. If they can convince the government to help out instead they’ll surely do so.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#672

Post by effingwewt »

itg wrote: post #520
smcl wrote: post #483

Flagged!? Come on this is extremely topical, I cannot think of a more on-topic thing for HN. It brings together: - Silicon Valley - Startups - Y Combinator - Current Events Any one of those is an appropriate submission for Hacker News but altogether, it’s just … there is nothing more appropriate for HN. This belongs at the top of the front page where I encountered it.

I imagine some people flagged it so it doesn't get more views. How pathetic of YCombinator itself begging for a bailout.

This was my reason for flagging it.

The balls to even try this, I'm enraged and the last thing I want is them getting more eyes.

This truly shows the disconnect we are now living in.

They said the quiet part out loud.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#673

Post by whiterace1488 »

cmurf wrote: post #284
tikkun wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People who invested in SVB should be wiped out, probably. People who deposited in SVB should not be wiped out. Depositors in banks aren't expected to do due diligence on the financial statements of the bank they're depositing in. Have you read the 10-K filings of your bank in detail?

Correct. The $250,000 FDIC cap is a favor to banks. They only pay fees to insure up to that amount. And it's bogus. The FDIC should require deposits to be insured, no matter the amount.

[dead]

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#674

Post by JohnFen »

simonw wrote: post #261
afavour wrote: post #57

[deleted]

Groupthink on this kind of decision is usually a feature, not a bug. When you're a startup founder, you have to focus your efforts on the unique problem you are trying to solve. For generic problems like "which bank should I use" taking a shortcut like "the one my peers are using already" is generally a great idea - saves you from having to waste your time investigating options that usually don't make a material diff…

> When you're a startup founder, you have to focus your efforts on the unique problem you are trying to solve.

When you're a founder, the unique problem that needs to be foremost in your mind is the business. You don't make business decisions based on "this is what everyone around me is doing".

If you don't have the time, talent, or energy to get into the minutia of running the business, you do at least hire good people who are into that sort of thing. Good people who do things like analyze situations, determine best approaches, etc.

> taking a shortcut like "the one my peers are using already" is generally a great idea

No. That's a really dumb idea. Is that really a common approach in SV startup culture?

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#675

Post by EFreethought »

School-Cotton wrote: post #41

When you’re talking to people outside your own community, it’s beneficial to communicate in the standard language, rather than in community-specific jargon. For example: “We have a simple request” instead of “We have a simple ask”.

Off topic: I really hate this trend of using verbs as nouns.

"Ask", "Spend", "Solve". It makes people sound stupid.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#676

Post by JeremyNT »

dmix wrote: post #658
axlee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

110% agree. At some point, risk HAS to be treated as what it is, risk, rather than just "another way to do things". We have so many banks treating risk as what it is, and pricing for it, well these people decided to go to another bank to get funding, well deal with it. It's not like the average citizen has this luxury.

Funny how everyone loves this idea but it only ever hurts small companies. I don't think gov is the solution here and YC asking is a bad look but let's contextualized the "socialized losses" of American companies in 2008. It 100% benefited bigco and the consequence of "too big to fail" was policy that destroyed a hundred smaller banks and further reduced the banking market to 5 mega players. Market corrections are no…

> Funny how everyone loves this idea but it only ever hurts small companies.

Why does size matter? These VC funded "small companies" are so sketchy that they needed their own special bank to manage the risk, and now their special bank just failed.

It's not the government's job to protect the weird VC funded moonshot "business model."

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#677

Post by JohnFen »

dehrmann wrote: post #540
nosefrog wrote: post #230

Unpopular opinion: the government should try to make depositors of banks whole when their banks fail.

I have no idea why this idea is suddenly so unpopular. People see putting money in banks as a de-facto safe decision. $250k might be a reasonable cutoff for individuals, but it's clearly way too low for businesses. If that threshold had been more like $10M, SVB might have even survived since depositors would have had faith they could access enough of their funds within a day of a bank failure. Instead, there was a ba…

> I have no idea why this idea is suddenly so unpopular.

It's not suddenly unpopular. It's never been popular to ask people to rescue businesses just because the lost a bet.

> it's clearly way too low for businesses.

Right, but businesses have a number of ways to limit their risk that individuals don't have. FDIC is not the only protection available, it's just the one that doesn't cost you anything.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#678

Post by corbulo »

skwirl wrote: post #651
corbulo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll get worse if they're bailed out! It would totally change the perception of risk if they'll be saved every time they shit the bed.

Oh no people might continue putting money in bank deposit accounts at banks regulators have said are solid, we definitely don't want people doing things so totally unnecessary and crazy.

what are the implications of a bank that cannot fail no matter how reckless it is with everyones money?

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#679

Post by skwirl »

corbulo wrote: post #678
skwirl wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no people might continue putting money in bank deposit accounts at banks regulators have said are solid, we definitely don't want people doing things so totally unnecessary and crazy.

what are the implications of a bank that cannot fail no matter how reckless it is with everyones money?

The bank is already shut down, dead, gone, past tense. It's shareholders are wiped out, as they should be. Nobody is calling to save a bank that doesn't exist anymore. We're talking about the depositors. I think this has been confusing to a lot of people.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#680

Post by JohnFen »

skwirl wrote: post #290

People are misdirecting their (rightful) ire over 2008 bank bailouts at depositors , which apparently is because they don't like some of those depositors for unrelated reasons. Nobody is defending the bank, which already has been shut down and its shareholders rightfully wiped out. The idea that backstopping depositors is moral hazard is preposterous and honestly embarrassing on a platform where people should know be…

> People are misdirecting their (rightful) ire over 2008 bank bailouts at depositors

I'm not mad at the depositors. I just don't think it's right to ask the rest of us to cover their bad bet.

> Bank deposit accounts are supposed to be boring financial infrastructure, not a source of risk.

And it's not, up to FDIC limits. But we aren't talking about average joes here. We're talking about businesses dealing with very large amounts of money. These people have a responsibility to know that everything comes with risk -- including uninsured deposits -- and not to be naive about how business and banking actually works.

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