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Urgent: Sign the petition now

ycombinator.com

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Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#321

Post by simple-thoughts »

simonw wrote: post #272
favflam wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, people should pay attention when a bank is missing a Chief Risk Officer for 8 months during the most volatile period in fixed income history when Fed funds rate moved 400bps. Also, it is not a good look with SVB's CEO personally lobbied to be excluded from stress tests that more than likely would have prevented SVB from YOLO'ing on 10 yr duration MBS.

If you're actively paying attention to things like that as a matter of course then you're a much more effective person than I am.

A decent sized startup with a CFO or even just decent advisers should be conducting due diligence on banking partners with over $250k in deposits. I’m in crypto which is a different world, but the idea that I would advise a project to deposit their treasury into a defi protocol I was not continuously risk monitoring is insane to me.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#322

Post by greenthrow »

Where was YC's petition or other action in support of all the thousands tech workers who have been laid off in recent months?

They don't care about the individuals affected. They care about their investments. That's it.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#324

Post by shkkmo »

tikkun wrote: post #157
nocoiner wrote: post #8

LOL, nope. Not interested in taking another spin on the “privatize gain, socialize loss” merry-go-round. The banks had to be saved in 2008 because they were, like, the financial system. I don’t see why private companies and funds that are much less integral to the functioning of the economy as a whole should be saved by the public fisc. Sorry about your disruption.

Disagree. People who invested in SVB should be wiped out, probably. People who deposited in SVB should not be wiped out. Depositors in banks aren't expected to do due diligence on the financial statements of the bank they're depositing in. Have you read the 10-K filings of your bank in detail?

> Depositors in banks aren't expected to do due diligence on the financial statements of the bank they're depositing in. Have you read the 10-K filings of your bank in detail?

If you're depositing more than the FDIC insurance limit, you should probably do some due diligence and/or get private insurance for the risk.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#325

Post by Ekaros »

greatpostman wrote: post #190

Rich fat cats all over Silicon Valley looking for society to socialize their losses. YC has an incredible amount of wealth as it is.

Shouldn't they have enough capital to well recapitalise the startups they funded? At least if they fully believe that they are great and will make the money back multipletimes?

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#326

Post by swatcoder »

garry wrote: post #144
axlee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

110% agree. At some point, risk HAS to be treated as what it is, risk, rather than just "another way to do things". We have so many banks treating risk as what it is, and pricing for it, well these people decided to go to another bank to get funding, well deal with it. It's not like the average citizen has this luxury.

The equity holders and management of SVB are likely to be wiped. In the petition we specifically call this out: we are not asking for their risks to be "socialized." Depositors have a reasonable expectation that when they choose a bank (especially a publicly traded bank that is regulated) that their deposits are safe. If this is not true, then most people will only bank with the largest banks. That's not a good situa…

> Depositors have a reasonable expectation that when they choose a bank (especially a publicly traded bank that is regulated) that their deposits are safe.

Not if they know how banks work, and plenty of those depositors do. They know that there’s a risk to their uninsured deposits (that’s why the insurance exists!) and so they either account for that risk or play dirty and pretend, after the fact, that they didn’t know better and that the government should pretty please make them whole.

> If this is not true, then most people will only bank with the largest banks. That's not a good situation.

No. They’ll do what they’ve doing for a century: diversify banks and asset classes, sweep accounts, buy private insurance, etc.

Deposits are a loan to the bank. If the bank doesn’t have any risk of default on those loans, that’s no free and efficient market. That’s the government giving bankers free money to play with. We already do that for small accounts held by naive investors because the stability is worth it and they can’t be expected to afford the inherent risk themselves, but that can’t extend to all accounts.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#327

Post by vorpalhex »

andrepd wrote: post #177
prepend wrote: post #133

What would I gain as a taxpayer in return for this bailout? Would the taxpayer receive 10% equity in YC? It seems like YC could have insured these funds, but didn’t. They saved money and accepted the risk. This risk is now realized. Seems bizarre that YC would be made whole. Certainly it saves jobs, but it benefits YC more than anyone else.

> Would the taxpayer receive 10% equity in YC? Make that 30–50 and we'd have a deal. Fucked up and want the state to rescue you? Fine, but your business is now mine, future profits and dividends (evabled by the bailout) will be distributed to all Americans, not just the handful of owners of "your" business. It's how the 2008 bailouts should have been handled, instead we got the biggest transfer of wealth from poor to…

The US government made $15B from the 2008 bailouts.

That's 0.6% return on investment which is kinda poor but overall the bailout was profitable for US taxpayers.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#328

Post by somsak2 »

garry wrote: post #144
axlee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

110% agree. At some point, risk HAS to be treated as what it is, risk, rather than just "another way to do things". We have so many banks treating risk as what it is, and pricing for it, well these people decided to go to another bank to get funding, well deal with it. It's not like the average citizen has this luxury.

The equity holders and management of SVB are likely to be wiped. In the petition we specifically call this out: we are not asking for their risks to be "socialized." Depositors have a reasonable expectation that when they choose a bank (especially a publicly traded bank that is regulated) that their deposits are safe. If this is not true, then most people will only bank with the largest banks. That's not a good situa…

There's other ways to make this work -- FDIC insurance is per-bank so you can spread your deposits across distinct banks to be covered in the low-to-mid-millions.

If you have >$5m and you haven't done due diligence on this, I'd call that a failure on the part of the company (or its advisors, like the accelerator they're a part of).

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#329

Post by icha »

The idiotic corporate spiritual newspeak is the cherry on top of this whole ordeal. Can't you just plainly ask for a bailout without overblowing the importance of your little bubble club?

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#330

Post by tekla »

jlmorton wrote: post #160
axlee wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was nothing arbitrary about that choice. This bank promised better deals BECAUSE they were not careful enough about the risk it entailed. That was their competitive advantage, and they made bank for it. Well, tough luck, now it's not anymore: it has nothing to do with being a large bank or a small bank, it has to do with healthy business practices.

Sorry, I'm not sure if you're confused, but these are simple bank accounts. There was no high interest yield. The average interest yield was a fraction of a percent. No one was chasing any yield. No one was taking any risks. It's a bank account. Are you suggesting tens of thousands of small business customers need to do due dilligence on the investment practices of their banks? And what about all the other regional b…

> Are you suggesting tens of thousands of small business customers need to do due dilligence on the investment practices of their banks

Yes? I do it with my personal after 2008

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