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Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

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Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#471

Post by Gwypaas »

jliptzin wrote: post #285
koolba wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then what do we do with the billions in remaining assets? Appropriate them, and leave small and mid businesses hanged to dry? Easy, pay out $250K per account, then distribute the rest pro rata based upon closing balance from when the fed's took over. If they have to wait because assets need to be liquidated then sucks to be them. I'm sure they can get their money faster if they agree to a haircut. > “This is a bail…

It is completely insane to allow innocent depositors to lose their money especially when the government clearly would have no problem coming up with the funds to backstop depositors since this is an isolated incident. This bank being located in a tech hotspot is incidental and I am sure some non-techies are swept up in this as well. Imagine a 70 year old woman who just lost her husband and sold her house to downsize…

> Imagine a 70 year old woman who just lost her husband and sold her house to downsize to an apartment. She has $1 million in her SVB account and plans to live off the interest in her retirement. Should this 70 year old widow take a $750k haircut because she hasn’t spent the last few years brushing up on SVB 10-k filings and calling up SVB’s board of directors to ask them how they plan to manage interest rate risk?

That is simply awful financial management. You can be extremely unlucky and have it happen the day you get your deposit, but that seems like an annoying edge case which is unlikely to happen in the real world.

In my jurisdiction across the pond, investment funds are the easiest method to manage the account insurance risk. They need to be legally and economically separated from the broker you are managing them through, so if whoever you are brokering with goes bankrupt, you still own them. You can access them with a new broker after a bit of hassle.

If you want low-risk, pick funds investing in government-backed bonds. High-risk choose stock market-based index funds.

Now the only thing counting towards the $250K limit is whatever you have in the brokerage account between transfers. Easy peasy, your risk of a bank collapse is zero and you have the money available within a couple of bank days notice.

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#472

Post by [deleted] »

tempsy wrote: post #170
manuelabeledo wrote: post #132

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 asse…

can’t people buy private insurance for their deposits above the $250k threshold? if you buy an expensive house or car you generally pay a lot more to insure that asset. not sure why people don’t think of buying insurance on their bank deposits in the same way if you find yourself in a situation where you need to hold much more than $250k in one account for whatever reason. But even if you’re an individual holding mil…

[deleted]

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#473

Post by kentonv »

fma wrote: post #117
marvin wrote: post #20

This is exactly the statement that's required, given the confusion and irresponsible politicization of deposit insurance. Shareholders lose 100%, depositors get 100% of their deposits back. It's a simple situation, and the former point (as opposed to the solution during the GFC) counteracts moral hazard.

If depositors get 100% back (I assume the government pays the difference between selling SBV assets & the deposits)...then what's the purpose of saying "FDIC Insured up to $250k"? It's a moot then isn't it? I don't need to go through the hassle of distributing my money anymore? Edit: I read the article. Yellen says "“But we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.” She says NOT…

The purpose of the $250k per-person-per-bank limit is to encourage large depositors to spread their money among many banks, which reduces risk for both them and the system. However, it's not clear that this limit is really the ideal design.

In the financial crisis 15 years ago, the FDIC in practice guaranteed 100% of deposits. They had to in order to keep people from running all the banks. Since then, we've all been told that banks are safe now because of new regulations. Lots of people have become complacent and haven't felt the need to manage multiple bank accounts to stay within FDIC limits.

SVB's collapse has suddenly let everyone know that, oh, those FDIC limits do actually matter and if you are over them in any of your accounts you had better start moving money. Unfortunately, that's likely to result in runs on lots more small banks as everyone moves their balance in excess of $250k over to JP Morgan (the bank that definitely can't fail).

Sure, it's easy to say now that it's all those people's fault for not managing their risk properly. But not long ago, a $2.5-millionaire opening 10 different bank accounts to stay under FDIC limits would have been called paranoid. And in any case, stupid or not, allowing runs on lots more banks could at some point lead to large-scale collapse of the financial system, which would be bad for much more than just those large depositors.

So it may be in everyone's interests for the FDIC to once again guarantee 100% of deposits. (I say "may", I don't pretend to be enough of an expert to decide this!) And maybe the $250k limit should be rethought going forward, into some other sort of rule that encourages diversification without encouraging contagion when a big bank fails?

(Disclosure: I had an account at SVB, but it was under the FDIC limit. So I don't have any personal need for a "bail out".)

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#474

Post by kamaal »

idopmstuff wrote: post #339
manuelabeledo wrote: post #132

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 asse…

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…

>>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.

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#475

Post by roflyear »

grugagag wrote: post #422
kemiller wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many were restricted by covenant with their investors to only use SVB.

Id like to hear more about that.

I've heard it was mostly they had credit agreements with svb that required them to bank exclusively with svb

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#476

Post by shjake »

bentlegen wrote: post #278
gerad wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I think those were “just” the yearly bonuses all employees receive.

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#478

Post by roflyear »

tome wrote: post #446
mym1990 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you propose a company with millions in cash keep that money if not a bank?

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.

If you're spending $500k a month on payroll it doesn't make sense to do that.

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#479

Post by oh_sigh »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #421
idopmstuff wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> > I've worked at startups for my whole career 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…

No one is asking anyone to feel sorry for them. They got punched in the nose, and they just don't want to be punched in the nose again.

Re: Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

#480

Post by mym1990 »

yeahsure22 wrote: post #304
gerad wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do the rules keep changing after the game has been played? And why does it seem to always favor people who are already wealthy beyond imagination? The rules were 250k insured. If you had excess deposits, additional coverage could easily be purchased.

I am not sure why you think the 250k limit is the end of the road in what is an extremely complex process. The 250k is so that depositors can be paid out quickly while the rest of the process gets going, which could take months or years.

In SVBs case the 250k payouts will only account for 5% of the deposits. SVBs assets, while hampered, are still substantial. What do you propose is done with those assets?

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