The title is clickbaity. It's not like the banks are missing any of their depositors' money.
I mean. Some of them are!
Possibly all of them!
America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
401–410 of 450 posts
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The shielding system was an official policy in the UK Yeah, it still didn't and doesn't work though. Carers will have families, they'll have children in school, they'll potentially have more than one job. You can't shield the "carers" so you can't shield the vulnerable outside of a wider scale lockdown. Lockdown was the only thing that stopped case numbers going up till the vaccine came along. > The risk of hospita…
The age of 40 is interesting - is it from the Economist's model[0]? I don't know how accurate it is, but I would say comorbidities look a lot more serious than a general age-based approach. [0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/13/our-covi...
People always point to "comorbidities" but many of the comorbidities in covid's case were things like "being overweight", you know, most of the population?
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does the government require banks to buy long-term treasuries? [1] Or did banks choose to buy long-term treasury bills, chasing the highest paper returns (i.e. discounting the risk of potential rising interest rates in the future)? It's not a rhetorical question, but a sincere one. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Treasury_securit... states that Treasuries are sold in all varieties of duration, from 4…
> Does the government require banks to buy long-term treasuries? Yes, there are a number of banks that have "Primary Dealer" [1] status which confers to them some benefits, but also makes them legally obligated to make some minimum number of winning bids on government treasury auctions. See the section under "Expectations & Requirements" in the link. Probably the most quantifiable requirement is they have to maintain…
There are a number of banks that are Primary Dealers, but it's a fairly small list. SVB wasn't on it. So SVB, in particular, was not required to buy long-term treasuries.
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#4041. The government requires banks buy their debt and hold it as reserves because it's considered the safest investment. 2. The government decides that, oops, it printed too much money in 2020/21 and is causing inflation, so it raises rates very quickly. 3. New treasuries yield 4 or 5 times as much in interest as the ones from 1-2 years ago. Why would anyone want to buy those old treasuries near face value now? 4. The…
I disagree with everything but the conclusion. I'm dubious that the "Fed's money printer" had much of an effect on inflation. It certainly didn't cause the SVB or other banks to go under. The rate increases did that... in this case. I don't think the particular path matters much. People tend to moralize banking, and post failure we tend to hunt for moral culprits. But... the historical fact is that banks fail sometim…
> I'm dubious that the "Fed's money printer" had much of an effect on inflation
In all of modern history around the world when has printing more money not resulted in inflation. Let's look at Zimbabwe and other countries that went nuts printing money.
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#4051. The government requires banks buy their debt and hold it as reserves because it's considered the safest investment. 2. The government decides that, oops, it printed too much money in 2020/21 and is causing inflation, so it raises rates very quickly. 3. New treasuries yield 4 or 5 times as much in interest as the ones from 1-2 years ago. Why would anyone want to buy those old treasuries near face value now? 4. The…
>>because it's considered the safest investment
you are wrong right at the first step.
there is credit risk (risk of default) and for this risk, treasuries are still considered safest.
then, there is duration risk (risk of interest rates increasing) - and this risk has always been there.
Bankers know about these risks, it is just they were greedy and decided to go for the highest yielding MBS, instead of short-term securities. => and obviously banks suffered consequences.
for bankers this is Banking 101
One can argue that what is going on right now is market forces punishing the most greedy bankers (SVB, Debit suisse, etc)
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
The age of 40 is interesting - is it from the Economist's model[0]? I don't know how accurate it is, but I would say comorbidities look a lot more serious than a general age-based approach. [0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/13/our-covi...
People always point to "comorbidities" but many of the comorbidities in covid's case were things like "being overweight", you know, most of the population?
I'm not sure how globally applicable that point is, although it could be. Do you have a link to any stats? How do you define "overweight"?
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
I buy this outline but honest question, was the massive covid stimulus avoidable? I rode a bicycle around NYC during the early days of covid and it was a ghost town, like not a person on the streets in a city of 8 million. On the weekend I took a ride up state for a hike and virtually every business was closed on the way. It seemed inevitable at that point the economic consequences of this were going to be massive an…
> I am wondering what the alternative was? When an economy stops producing services and goods, somebody is going to need to reduce their consumption of said goods eventually. The question is just, who that is. Another poster above mentioned three ways a government can balance their budget: spending less, raising more, decreasing real value of debt by inflation. Each of those has a target "audience", which suffers the…
And for raising more its usually also the middle class. Generally, middle class is a convenient target.
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wrong. This is corruption. Janet is picking winners and losers. Some people are losing their deposits and some are not. You are systemic if you had dinner with Janet yesterday. Big call. Huge. Got some data or similar to back it? Edit: If there's clear picking of winners, or even plausibly so it's gonna look pretty bad. [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/01/janet-yelle...
You don't need a direct financial kickback to define corruption. From: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/svb-signature-bank-failures-... > Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told senators that government refunds of uninsured deposits will not be extended to every bank that fails, only those that pose systemic risk to the financial system.
Yellen just repeated the exact federal reserve policy, like every treasury sec/federal reserve chairman has done since forever. Kinda wild to define that as corruption, but to each their own.
Instead, why don't you look at how many people have lost uninsured deposits since the FDIC was created in 1933? You'll find its extremely low to nonexistent. Thats because while the FDIC has a 250k insurance limit, it does its absolute best to not use it- Usually by coordinating a bank sale or private-public rescue plan.
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how are you going to compare prices between two periods if you don't include the same items in the "market basket"?
By comparing median total living costs to reflect what's typical. A cell phone and computer are indispensable today, a land line not so much, for instance.
With that definition, won't you conflate inflation with changes to income distribution and economic growth?
Having a 2% inflation target would in practice mean having a target for median living cost increase.
Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finally! People calling it what it is. Corruption. And the domestic angle isn’t even the worst. Breton-Woods put America in a sort of custodianship which they have betrayed. Raising and lowering rates to promote your domestic economy without even considering the global impact is fucked up if you promised the world that your currency can serve as a trusted foundation. World order is still fluctuating all as a result o…
> if you promised the world that your currency can serve as a trusted foundation. How do people get this backwards? The US didn't say, "use our currency as the global reserve currency!" Countries chose and continue to choose to use the USD for global commerce. No one is forcing them, the USD really is valuable. > World order is still fluctuating all as a result of these betrayals. So raising rates is a betrayal, but…
You know what the US does to country leaders who even talk about trading oil in currency other than USD? Hint: kill with impunity.