Live data from Hacker News

SVB Hall of Shame

svbhallofshame.wordpress.com

101–110 of 307 posts

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#101
post #91

Call me naïve, but if I put money in a bank I should be able to get it back whenever I want. If I didn't want it to be liquid, I'd buy something less liquid. The very concept of a bank run is ridiculous. If all a bank's customers want their cash back, they should be able to get it back without affecting the liquidity of the bank. Transaction accounts don't earn me anything and have fees of their own. There's little i…

That is not what banks do, its the modern banking system.

That's what bitcoin was all about..

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#102
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but it is entirely prisoner's dilemma. The rational decision, when you know you cannot control how others will act, is to minimize the pain. If you saw the HN thread on Thursday, there were founders posting that they were told it will be fine. How do you think they were feeling on Friday? And it is not a personal decision, continuity of business is a pretty big deal. Nobody in the company would forgive…

> You're right, but it is entirely prisoner's dilemma. But part of what makes that whole bit of game theory interesting is that it has a lot more complexity then just the simple version. Yes in a plain prisoner's dilemma betray can make sense, but in an iterated prisoner's dilemma that's no longer true. That's been part of the debate around the whole debacle, for much of SV's history it was very much iterated, it was…

Are you conflating theories here? Any research recommending alternative strategies for iterated games is almost certainly looking at repeating games between a consistent pair of players.

I’m not in the field but I’ve never heard a theory that a generous strategy works in a game between an arbitrary number of (mostly) anonymous players.

And to call this event part of an iterated game at all seems… unusual.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#105
These people acted rationally. As soon as there was even a hint of "this bank could fail" it's a no brainer to press a couple buttons on your app and transfer your money even if there is only a 0.1% chance of failure.

It's just game theory.

The problem is when everyone acts to protect themselves from the 0.1% chance event it actually becomes a 100% likely event.

That's why FDIC Insurance was invented in order to prevent bank runs and is why we have had so few in the hundreds years since it was invented.

The obvious solution is to waive the FDIC insurance caps and probably increase the cost of the insurance to make up for the increased risk of failure.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but it is entirely prisoner's dilemma. The rational decision, when you know you cannot control how others will act, is to minimize the pain. If you saw the HN thread on Thursday, there were founders posting that they were told it will be fine. How do you think they were feeling on Friday? And it is not a personal decision, continuity of business is a pretty big deal. Nobody in the company would forgive…

FYI: prisoners dilemma is an interesting game theory experiment where you do better if everyone cooperates. You do better than your "opponent" if you don't. The wikipedia explains it well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Prisoner's dilemma requires that the parties cannot communicate with each other.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#107
post #91

Call me naïve, but if I put money in a bank I should be able to get it back whenever I want. If I didn't want it to be liquid, I'd buy something less liquid. The very concept of a bank run is ridiculous. If all a bank's customers want their cash back, they should be able to get it back without affecting the liquidity of the bank. Transaction accounts don't earn me anything and have fees of their own. There's little i…

Ok, I'm starting a new bank and everyone will be able to withdraw all at once, bank runs will be a thing of the past, your interest rate will be 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000125%

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#108

> The board was asleep at the switch. They are now unemployable. That's not really how this works. The CAO of the bank was CFO of Lehman. People in these positions just get credit for the fact that they had a front row seat for this sort of financial implosion, so they can (theoretically) help whoever else's board they join avoid that sort of thing. > But those players within the venture capital community who were si…

Isn't this misinformation? The Chief Admin Officer of SVB Securities was an exec at Lehman, but SVB Securities is independent of SVB. If you Google [svb lehman], you get pages and pages debunking this.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#109
post #91

Call me naïve, but if I put money in a bank I should be able to get it back whenever I want. If I didn't want it to be liquid, I'd buy something less liquid. The very concept of a bank run is ridiculous. If all a bank's customers want their cash back, they should be able to get it back without affecting the liquidity of the bank. Transaction accounts don't earn me anything and have fees of their own. There's little i…

> Australian banks make their money through mortgages

Where do you think your banks get the money to loan out for mortgages? I’ll give you a hint: your deposits. This is how banks work.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#110
post #74

The amount of victim-blaming astroturfing I've seen on hn this week has been quite surprising. Depositors are never, ever to blame for bank runs. Edit: From the about page: > Who I am is not important. Holding accountable the hypocrites responsible for Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is. I can be reached at svbhallofshame@protonmail.com. All correspondence will be kept anonymous. It's just missing a PAC called somethi…

Can't you kill any bank with a bank run?

If you are solvent, in principle, you can get a loan from another bank to cover illiquidity.

Yes, runs can kill any bank, but insolvency killed SVB first.

Post reply on HN