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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

#961
post #539
post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty baffled to see so much of this on HN. HN comment quality, thoughtfulness, and etc seems to drop off with higher visibility…. and sadly generally too. The more visible the more comments resemble Reddit or the god awful knee jerk hot takes you get in local newspaper comment sections :( It’s a bummer as I’ve enjoyed the generally high comment quality on HN for a long time.

Maybe @dang could accept monthly donations to pay for a couple moderators? Last I heard they were volunteers. Anyway, the fact that the top-voted comment now complains about the low quality of answers shows that moderation + voting still help.

I don't think it is an issue of moderation. The bad comments aren't rule breaking ... they're just bad.

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

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably get my next paycheck or two, but I'll lose my job. You're pretty clearly saying here that I should lose my job, along with many other people, because of the bank at which my company's cash is stored. > Perhaps they shouldn't keep money in the bank in the first place, but find other uses for them. I work at a small startup that's raised five million dollars. Not a huge amount of money, but obviously losi…

You do not have a right to a job at the taxpayers expense. We all feel for you and are rooting for the workers but no one has an inmate right to others money. Especially when the right being demanded is size figure salaries. If you were to lose your job, there is a standardized insurance that kicks in that all Americans get. You are demanding special, better treatment at the tax payers expense. Look, everyone on this…

> You do not have a right to a job at the taxpayers expense.

Ignoring the fact that millions of Americans literally have this, the taxpayers are on the hook for zero percent of the depositor restorations in SVB.

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

#963

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…

This was a rare event when, for once, elites would learn that it's possible to do everything right and still fail catastrophically due to systemic factors. This has been the case for the majority of people over the past decade. The only reason regular people accepted their own situation over the past decade is that they thought "rules are rules." But no, rules are not rules, it turns out. Only plebs need to take the consequences of silly or unjust rules. The elites are immune to unjust rules. When a pesky inconvenient rule affects the elites, it can simply be waived away.

Why did I have to learn my lesson about the flawed system and the acceptance of tough luck, but politically-connected people didn't?

What we have today is a 2-class society.

It's the word of law above all... Unless you're politically connected; then suddenly the word of law yields to common sense.

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

#964

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 assets to make customers, not owners, whole. From the broader public's perception, you're splitting hairs. The gov - at taxpayer's expense - *are* ______ing* depositors with deposits over $250k. Depositors who are well aware of the limits of what's covered. Depositors with more…

> The gov - at taxpayer's expense - are ______ing* depositors with deposits over $250k. The FDIC isn't funded by the government. FDIC runs and provides this insurance by premiums paid by banks. No taxpayer money is going into SVB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp... > The FDIC is not supported by public funds; member banks' insurance dues are its primary source of funding. > When dues and…

Premiums aren't paid by the banks. The banks aren't printing money. The premiums are paid by those using the bank. The sleight-of-hand wording is great for swaying preception but it an unacceptable deviation from transparency.

It's like the saying "...paid for by a grant from the Federal Government..." Nah. It was - one way or another - paid for by taxpayers.

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

#965

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…

As a long-time tech person and someone who has started multiple companies, including one venture-backed one, I'm happy to explain why I think uninsured depositholders should not have their losses subsidized by taxpayers. One, anybody with a bank account has heard about the FDIC and the FDIC insurance limits. Presumably anybody smart enough to raise millions of dollars know that if part of something is insured, the re…

> bad treasury management

There are lots of ways for a startup to die. If you have $2m cash do you really want to manage (2/0.25) bank accounts, adopt all that administrative overhead, just to reduce your probability of death by bank failure, when possibly the added overhead may increase your overall probability of death because now you are distracted and unfocused on the things that are far more likely to kill you?

> If we're going to spend billions of dollars on improving the safety net, I think startups are way, way down the list of priorities.

This is first order thinking which increases systemic risk by undermining trust. The probability of future bank runs goes up.

> Three, among startups, market-driven disruption is practically a religion. Startups destroy existing companies all the time. Quite often it's an explicit goal, where startup X lists existing players A and B as companies whose lunches will get eaten because they are making bad choices. > Four, there has been endless puffery and chest-thumping among VCs and tech startups how their genius justifies pocketing billions and billions of dollars when times are good. Best and brightest, incredibly hard workers, blah blah blah. Including a special tax exemption for VCs, because they're just such amazing financial wizards.

You're making broad generalizations about a large group of heterogeneous agents. You're also using language that's full of moral judgement (revenge, disgust) instead of focusing on stuff that matters to the economy or to everyday people.

> But it's not a problem for taxpayers to solve.

Why not? Taxpayers exist to fund things that are thought to be in the public good. And isn't it a lack of imagination to think that taxpayers are the only way to solve this? What about clawback of executive compensation or shareholder dividends?

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

#966

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…

Uninsured assets are what they sound like: uninsured. That's why companies typically hold a minimum amount of their assets as cash, and the cash they do hold isn't typically concentrated in one place. Credit risk is a huge aspect of financial management. If you don't manage risk you get losses. The "small business" sympathy campaign is typical of situations like these (pretty much touted in every bank failure) to justify public spending for private losses. The public doesn't get profit from company risk (particularly for tax dodging/low employment tech companies), it should not be expected to take the losses.

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

#967
post #349
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depositors are protected exactly as any other depositors and there are solutions to the protection ceiling. Like insured cash sweep. That VCs forced the small companies to operate in less safe way and gave them bad advice is 100% fault of these. I do not know why it was so, but this really seems like the case of "we want benefits of minimal regulation and getting better protection then everyone else gets from the gov…

The $250k is the protection floor , not the ceiling. The FDIC guarantees that $250k, but SVB has assets well beyond $250k per account. The FDIC is in the business of protecting depositors. So it will pay out the floor immediately as a matter of course, and then will continue to use the tools it has available and the remaining assets of SVB to pay out more — perhaps 100%, perhaps some amount less — to depositors.

[dead]

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

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bailout implies that the individual/business being made whole *should* have made decisions to prevent the situation from occurring in the first place. What responsibility did a SVB depositor have in SVB's decision to purchase billions of MBS in 2021?

If the depositor wasn’t ok with that (presumably public) decision they should have pulled out then. Or pulled out when treasury rates started ticking up and the writing was on the wall. Alternatively, they should have bought private insurance for their money or structured their money in multiple banks.

I can only partially agree to this, they did a lot of creative accounting and weren't hedging their interest rate risk. Do you really expect a retail depositor to understand fully the implications of a large bank not holding adequate interest rate swaps? This seems like the perfect example where government oversight is needed as not everyone is an expert in this

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

#969

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time tech person and someone who has started multiple companies, including one venture-backed one, I'm happy to explain why I think uninsured depositholders should not have their losses subsidized by taxpayers. One, anybody with a bank account has heard about the FDIC and the FDIC insurance limits. Presumably anybody smart enough to raise millions of dollars know that if part of something is insured, the re…

> bad treasury management There are lots of ways for a startup to die. If you have $2m cash do you really want to manage (2/0.25) bank accounts, adopt all that administrative overhead, just to reduce your probability of death by bank failure, when possibly the added overhead may increase your overall probability of death because now you are distracted and unfocused on the things that are far more likely to kill you?…

I just love that all the people who have discovered treasury management this week think that a) the only way to do that is keep $250k in n accounts, and b) that even if that's what people did, it would be so incredibly burdensome.

If startups want to take on bank risk, great. If they don't, also great, and there are many ways for them to do that. They are allowed to manage their risks as they see fit. If they can't, that is not a problem for taxpayers to solve. I get why some people here are pitching "socialism, but only for would-be billionaires", but I promise it's not a winning proposition in the wider world.

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

#970

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…

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…

I dislike these populist, low resolution takes that use rhetorical devices ("gambled" instead of "invested") to try to persuade but are otherwise void of well-reasoned analysis and are more about criticising one's own confusion.

If you want something to be justifiably upset about, it's the carried interest loophole.

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