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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

#751
I absolutely think that depositors should be made whole - and - they will.

At the same time, I think a lot of the VCs who systematically talked shit about government regulations while trying to shill crypto as a solution should very publicly eat crow. I won't lie: it will give me a great deal of personal satisfaction, but, it will also make any "bailout" (or, whatever you want to call it ) a much easier lift politically.

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

#752

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…

the depositors shouldn't get paid beyond what remains of the assets of the bank!!!

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

#753
post #370

The only comic thing in this entire tragedy is watching the fanatics who have been relentlessly preaching to others such dictums as “move quick and break things” and “only the paranoid survive”, extolling the virtues of “creative destruction” and repeating ad infinitum the Reagan quote "The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" cry out for government i…

I tend to be libertarian, but there are reasonable roles for government, and regulating banks and life insurers by forcing them to contribute to something like the FDIC and the state insurance commission (or whatever that life insurance thing is called) is legitimate even to most conservatives. Stepping in to smooth out systemic problems is another valid function— like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers, lik…

One important aspect is that we may be embedded in a vicious circle of discontinuity events and smoothing. A broad expectation that smoothing will be applied after a discontinuity event will tend to make people more willing to accept the future risk of discontinuity events in their decision making.

Less risk-avoiding behavior regarding discontinuity events makes discontinuity events more likely. Then, when the next discontinuity event happens, if smoothing is again applied, it reinforces this expectation, which reinforces the probability of future discontinuities, etc.

For this reason, swearing off active smoothing could actually result in a smoother system, eventually (after the pain of transition, of course).

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

#754
post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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

#755
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s from the hubris and excesses of recent SV culture. And most Americans have no conception of being able to have 250k in a checking account. The vengeance attitude can be taken too far however but as depositors are ultimately made 80-100% whole seems a reasonable outcome. Bottom line uninsured means uninsured. Read your contracts. Although shouldn’t be angry if they can be made whole.

Most Americans work for a company that does in fact have $250K in a checking account like SVB...

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

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's just spiteful. I would rather keep the startups in business than punish the VCs by making them lose money on their current investments.

The VCs caused the run on the bank is what I'm reading.

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

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dramatic misunderstanding of those two categories if investing, their motivations, and end goals. It’s like saying an F1 team will now buy family economy cars to race with since their prices are down now. You invest in a startup fund for extremely high risk high reward outcomes. You invest in interest rate bonds etc for guaranteed low outcome. HN has become ridiculous.

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.

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

#758

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…

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)

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

#759
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the “conspiring”, I am referring to reports of VCs mass-emailing their investees to move everything out of SVB right now.

The VC's obligation is to their startups... Its a completely rational decision to get your money out of SVB once you know others are thinking the exact same.

So rational decisions get bailouts now? Can I bill the government for doing some problems in math workbook? What point are you making here exactly?

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

#760
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn’t depositors learn a lesson that they should get additional insurance beyond the $250,000?

Because the bank has more than enough assets to payback at least 70-80%. Are you suggesting that money should be appropriated by someone just to teach them a lesson?

No, but I understand the phrase “be made whole” to mean that depositors should not face the risk of losing that 20-30%. They should take some “hit” as OP put it above.
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