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2023 bank failures


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4 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


If they knew what was coming, wouldn’t they have sold it all instead of a fraction?

This is sort of like Enron. If you sell it all off and it survives, you have lost your position. In addition, there if it craters after you did a full fire sale, there is no plausible deniability. Now we have the question of did they "know" or did they do it for some other reason. That plausible deniability is what should keep them out of prison.

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This is sort of like Enron. If you sell it all off and it survives, you have lost your position. In addition, there if it craters after you did a full fire sale, there is no plausible deniability. Now we have the question of did they "know" or did they do it for some other reason. That plausible deniability is what should keep them out of prison.

It’s not like they did it in the middle of a bull market.

Interesting bias thought experiment:

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2 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

Such a disingenuous tweet. Insiders hold less than 0.5% of the company. Those sales were for a few thousand shares. For example: Michelle Draper’s 25% sale was a whopping 974 shares.  

 

The question is still always going to remain though of why the sale? This is why the reporting mechanism is in place and why I doubt they did a true "dump" and more than likely just moving capital around.

Besides, you generally see the nefarious selloff in industries outside of things directly tied to the financial sector. Too many people pay too much close attention to the banking sector. You would have to be an idiot (and the payoff would need to be astronomical) for them to purposely dump knowing the bank may fail.

 

2 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


It’s not like they did it in the middle of a bull market.

Interesting bias thought experiment:

 

 

 

 

The only real issue I have with this is the precedent that this would set regarding the policy of the 250k guarantee by the FDIC.  Does this imply that the value itself needs to be investigated and potentially raised? If so, what does that mean? Is this an issue of the continued steady float of inflation since the last permanent increase in 2010? Or is this more tied to the change in the shape of the distribution of accounts?

Lots of weird shit tied in here that highlights the issues with risk mitigation and distribution of accounts more than anything else.

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16 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


It’s not like they did it in the middle of a bull market.

Interesting bias thought experiment:

 

 

 

 

Last time we had a major farm crisis in the 80's they let a shit load of banks failed, and the FDIC pushed a lot of guys out of business by accelerating their loans. 

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43 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

Except that is not at all the extent of the fallout.  If SVB’s uninsured depositors would have been forced to wait until the assets were liquidated (likely months) then thousands of businesses would close, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs.  And that’s assuming it isn’t a contagion that spreads to other banks.

Or maybe it all works out.

But I don't understand why you do that when it takes relatively little resources to restore a semblance of calm by making that money available now. 

People want this whole thing to be a lesson. It certainly should be. It's a lesson in the dangers for a bank of having so much of your deposits tied up in such a small fraction of your clients. It's a lesson in how quickly money can be moved out of banks. It's a lesson in the dangers of banks holding so many assets in long term bonds in a time of rising interest rates. But I don't agree that we should be sending a big fat lesson to depositors all around the country that the money they have in the banking system - even if it's above the $250k FDIC insurance threshold - is at risk. 

There were also international implications for this, which massive reassurance now heads off at the pass. 

All of this seems so obvious as the right move. I'm not trying to convince anyone that their point of view is wrong. I couldn't even if I wanted to. But I do not share that sentiment and I'm glad the government doesn't either. 

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29 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

 

The question is still always going to remain though of why the sale? This is why the reporting mechanism is in place and why I doubt they did a true "dump" and more than likely just moving capital around.

The sale is regular/periodic, and also planned before that execution. Execs also have further selling restrictions around the window of earnings release, so basically constraints on improper discretionary selling. 
 

You can go to sec.gov, plug in his name, and see his reported history of sales. This particular transaction is not irregular. 

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2 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

I just read something in the NYT that helped me to understand the sentiment of some on this thread as I just caught up:

The venture capital community, a group that includes a vocal group of libertarians, was just bailed out. Yes, these investors do good by funding start-ups, but they have also long lobbied for fewer regulations and also benefited from the special treatment of carried interest. This all looks particularly egregious after some of them spent the weekend begging for government help.

But the reality is that if S.V.B. was just a small regional bank that did not have ties to loud, politically connected venture capitalists and the tech community, it might have been allowed to die — and its customers, individuals and small businesses, would have suffered. Instead, because it is Silicon Valley, it commanded attention.

SVB did die. What a weird article. Sorkin reminds me of a lot of posters here. @Dahobbs @Sawbonz @Chopper Do y’all now see why it was absolutely necessary to do something yesterday?

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1 hour ago, axiom of foundation said:

Question for the finance experts. Say a person has $280 in a Wells Fargo - should they be worried? 

If you had put $250 in Wells Fargo and $30 in Bank of America, you can brag online about being smarter than techies and how that means they deserve to burn

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3 minutes ago, Slacks said:

Haven't read this entire thread, so maybe the answer is already here...

But tell me about the unspoken money laundering scheme that allowed SVB to corner an entire market and have very little competition...

It's moreso that the deregulation enacted in 2018 enabled them to take on greater levels of risk that other financial institutions were unwilling to take. Because SVB was able and willing to take on more risk, they could effectively corner that previously untapped market and exploit it. The result in good times is the explosive growth we saw. The result in bad times is the explosive death we saw. 

Who knew risk exposure was so risky! Thank goodness we made it easier to let banks be riskier with more money! It surely will go differently next time around 

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1 hour ago, pacman said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Snake Diggity said:

Those fuckers need to fry.

See below. We see this every time some entity has a large change in stock price. Just looking at the most recent transaction doesn't tell you anything. When a significant pat of your compensation is in shares, you'll likely regularly liquidate a portion of them so you can spend that money. 

31 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

The sale is regular/periodic, and also planned before that execution. Execs also have further selling restrictions around the window of earnings release, so basically constraints on improper discretionary selling. 
 

You can go to sec.gov, plug in his name, and see his reported history of sales. This particular transaction is not irregular. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

 
I haven't seen a single person advocate for bailouts. Protecting depositors is not a bailout.

I disagree with that. Protecting depositors isn't a bailout of the bank. But it is a bailout of the depositors. That doesn't mean it is wrong. But it is a bailout, as in it "bails them out" of financial uncertainty. 

25 minutes ago, Porterhouse said:

SVB did die. What a weird article. Sorkin reminds me of a lot of posters here. @Dahobbs @Sawbonz @Chopper Do y’all now see why it was absolutely necessary to do something yesterday?

We did what I expected us to do. I'm still not convinced it was necessary. At this point, FDIC might as well just insure all deposits at all banks. It is clearly policy to do so. Might as well operate and extract premiums in accordance with that policy. Or maybe this policy only applies to special banking customers. I guess we will see. 

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Poor people eat into the disingenuous tweets about people selling their shares/stock/equity simply because they've never had to deal with the headache of being granted RSUs or options and then exercising them. If they had, they'd know you typically schedule this trades well in advance, and do so within a defined framework (e.g. mine is I think I can sell up to 50% or $1.5mm, whichever is higher).

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2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I disagree with that. Protecting depositors isn't a bailout of the bank. But it is a bailout of the depositors. That doesn't mean it is wrong. But it is a bailout, as in it "bails them out" of financial uncertainty. 

We did what I expected us to do. I'm still not convinced it was necessary. At this point, FDIC might as well just insure all deposits at all banks. It is clearly policy to do so. Might as well operate and extract premiums in accordance with that policy. Or maybe this policy only applies to special banking customers. I guess we will see. 

And from what I've read, if this happens (and probably should?), the fees, in part or in whole (over time) will be passed on to the consumer. Which is maybe as it should be, considering they the consumers are receiving the protection and not the bank.

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11 minutes ago, Captainant said:

It's moreso that the deregulation enacted in 2018 enabled them to take on greater levels of risk that other financial institutions were unwilling to take. Because SVB was able and willing to take on more risk, they could effectively corner that previously untapped market and exploit it. The result in good times is the explosive growth we saw. The result in bad times is the explosive death we saw. 

Who knew risk exposure was so risky! Thank goodness we made it easier to let banks be riskier with more money! It surely will go differently next time around 

Hence the post I made earlier about big poppa Jaime Dimon being prescient and wise, despite being derided as "Jaime Biden" around FiDi the last few years:

Quote

The big winner: Jamie Dimon and the big banks. JPMorgan Chase’s bankers spent the week opening up new accounts as everyone fled smaller lenders in favor of its “fortress balance sheet.” Investors have complained over the years about Dimon’s focus on having enough capital and sufficient liquidity at the expense of earnings, but his approach now looks like the right one.

 

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In proxy statement of the company that *was* SVB, execs are subject to “Recoupment (or clawback) policy”

And regardless of that, if you can prove they were willfully negligent in their management of company/assets, you can come after them in court. 

That many investors *in* the company lost their investments, im sure theres no shortage of them and lawyers hungry for a lawsuit.

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We did what I expected us to do. I'm still not convinced it was necessary. At this point, FDIC might as well just insure all deposits at all banks. It is clearly policy to do so. Might as well operate and extract premiums in accordance with that policy. Or maybe this policy only applies to special banking customers. I guess we will see. 
I think FDIC absolutely should insure all deposits. We need depositors to have faith that their money is safe.
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36 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

I hate to say it but if it looks like a bailout, it doesn't matter whether it's "really" a bailout. They're going to call it the Big Tech Bailout.

Is it a bailout if there is no real bailout? Again, at the moment we’re talking about timing differences on access to money unless the disposition of the bank assets goes terribly wrong.

Idiots are going to call it whatever they want, because they are idiots and looking for clicks on social media. I hate social media, everyone’s inherent need to share their opinions and spew garbage slowly (or maybe not so slowly any more) pushes us closer and closer to the cliff’s edge.

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3 minutes ago, Brew said:

Is it a bailout if there is no real bailout? Again, at the moment we’re talking about timing differences on access to money unless the disposition of the bank assets goes terribly wrong.

Idiots are going to call it whatever they want, because they are idiots and looking for clicks on social media. I hate social media, everyone’s inherent need to share their opinions and spew garbage slowly (or maybe not so slowly any more) pushes us closer and closer to the cliff’s edge.

Speaking of idiots, I have a real tough time vilifying people for playing whatever card they chose to play in what was essentially the prisoners dilemma/game theory, when it comes to the bank run.

I personally think it's arrogance to sit in judgment of both; people pulling out their money to get ahead of it or not pulling it out in hopes that the bank weathers the storm. It's an impossibly hard problem to get right except in hindsight, IMO.

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1 minute ago, Brew said:

Is it a bailout if there is no real bailout? Again, at the moment we’re talking about timing differences on access to money unless the disposition of the bank assets goes terribly wrong.

Yes? Providing needed liquidity in order to avoid financial distress (for the depositors) is a bailout. Bailouts aren't inherently wrong, but I realize some treat the word as a pejorative. 

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4 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Yes? Providing needed liquidity in order to avoid financial distress (for the depositors) is a bailout. Bailouts aren't inherently wrong, but I realize some treat the word as a pejorative. 

I think it's fairer to say there is no bailout for the owners of SVB. 

I don't know if this is being advocated for elsewhere. I haven't followed this on other social media outside of this forum. I have read a bunch of articles, but that's about it. It seems like it has been in places. I do know not one person has advocated for it on here. 

I think my main thing on making depositor's whole is I don't feel like the juice was going to be worth the squeeze. Whatever limited market lesson is taught by not making depositor's whole is not worth the uncertainty introduced into the system. To me it was worth giving depositors immediate access to their money simply to calm markets around the globe and not let this thing become more than what it is. I understand that's not everyone's perspective, but it is mine. 

I'm not a fan of making FDIC insurance an unlimited amount, even if what is happening in the case of SVB and Signature is sending that market signal. Once you make it the law it sends a much different signal. Maybe there's a future instance where it's more appropriate not to make depositor's whole. I don't think this was it, but maybe there's a circumstance in the future where that is true. 

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3 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

I think it's fairer to say there is no bailout for the owners of SVB. 

I don't know if this is being advocated for elsewhere. I haven't followed this on other social media outside of this forum. I have read a bunch of articles, but that's about it. It seems like it has been in places. I do know not one person has advocated for it on here. 

I think my main thing on making depositor's whole is I don't feel like the juice was going to be worth the squeeze. Whatever limited market lesson is taught by not making depositor's whole is not worth the uncertainty introduced into the system. To me it was worth giving depositors immediate access to their money simply to calm markets around the globe and not let this thing become more than what it is. I understand that's not everyone's perspective, but it is mine. 

I'm not a fan of making FDIC insurance an unlimited amount, even if what is happening in the case of SVB and Signature is sending that market signal. Once you make it the law it sends a much different signal. Maybe there's a future instance where it's more appropriate not to make depositor's whole. I don't think this was it, but maybe there's a circumstance in the future where that is true. 

My problem with the FDIC not making insuring all deposits as explicit policy, is that there is now a disconnect from the de facto policy (insuring all deposits) and the risk management of the FDIC, including collecting premiums. We're insuring the whole system, but not paying for that insurance. That's a dangerous policy. And, if we aren't insuring all deposits, then the market signal is muddled and effectively says that we'll only protect special depositors, not all of them. Oh, and ultimately those special depositors are being protected on the backs of everyone else. So yeah, that would be a problem.  

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My problem in all of this is that if the FDIC  guarantees 100% of all deposits, why are there private banks vs a central government bank that works direct to the public? If the government assumes all of the risks of a guarantee, why does the private bank get to use the deposits as an investment vehicle? I am not a fan of the idea if where this entire set of logic could lead.

I think the real issue here is not the logic of guarantees or the potential value of this type of bank, but the fact that the individual account sizes are so large that it flies in the face of what the current value of the guarantee is.  Something structurally needs to change. Either bank need to be forced to have better internal controls and risk monitoring and we need to rethink the logic of how the guarantee works or this type of thing will happen over and over again.

The original idea was of the FDIC guarantee was to protect the small individual account holders. Now we are in a situation where there are massive corporate accounts that this type of guarantee makes no sense for.  Do we need to designate a different type of guarantee? How would this mechanism ever work?

 

The real issue at hand is that individual private wealth accumulation and corporate wealth accumulation have not progressed in a linear fashion.  Now are looking at values that would need some type of logarithmic correction to make them seem similar. Because of this, the continued raise in the current structure of  FDIC guarantee is like trying to put a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It is the "right type" of treatment, but nowhere near in scale or scope. The problem with that is now we are changing the risk profile and risk management of all banking institutions, to try and "fix" a current problem.  So the real question needs to be is this a symptom of a much larger concern or is this a localized problem.

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fucking autocorrect
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2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

My problem with the FDIC not making insuring all deposits as explicit policy, is that there is now a disconnect from the de facto policy (insuring all deposits) and the risk management of the FDIC, including collecting premiums. We're insuring the whole system, but not paying for that insurance. That's a dangerous policy. 

 

I guess I feel like there's a lot of that that goes on. It's very expensive to cover peak events, which is why Black Swan events are so dangerous. You can prepare for a certain amount of flooding, but it's too expensive to prepare for 100 year events. You can prepare for a certain energy usage surge, but not for the most extreme. You can create a transportation network or a bandwidth network, or a communications network that handles excessive demand, but not extreme amounts.

It would be too big of a drain towards an efficient economy to collect premiums to cover all deposits. But there's sufficient premiums to cover this incident, particularly if it prevents anything further from happening - whether something further would have happened or not. Why risk it if it's not necessary? Especially if it could be harmful in a way it doesn't have to be.

You say it's a dangerous policy, and I will agree that's a legitimate point of view. I don't want you to think I'm dismissing it or think it has no merit. But from my point of view it's not necessary, and actually sends a harmful signal if you put it in writing. To be fair, the federal government IS insuring the whole banking system, if not every deposit made there. If a decision is made in the future not to cover the uninsured portion of deposits, then hopefully the circumstances warrant it, whatever they might be. But removing that option doesn't make sense to me. 

But I'm grateful to have a civil sharing of different points of view, regardless. I'm glad to hear your thinking on it, and appreciate it. 

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I guess I feel like there's a lot of that that goes on. It's very expensive to cover peak events, which is why Black Swan events are so dangerous. You can prepare for a certain amount of flooding, but it's too expensive to prepare for 100 year events. You can prepare for a certain energy usage surge, but not for the most extreme. You can create a transportation network or a bandwidth network, or a communications network that handles excessive demand, but not extreme amounts.
It would be too big of a drain towards an efficient economy to collect premiums to cover all deposits. But there's sufficient premiums to cover this incident, particularly if it prevents anything further from happening - whether something further would have happened or not. Why risk it if it's not necessary? Especially if it could be harmful in a way it doesn't have to be.
You say it's a dangerous policy, and I will agree that's a legitimate point of view. I don't want you to think I'm dismissing it or think it has no merit. But from my point of view it's not necessary, and actually sends a harmful signal if you put it in writing. To be fair, the federal government IS insuring the whole banking system, if not every deposit made there. If a decision is made in the future not to cover the uninsured portion of deposits, then hopefully the circumstances warrant it, whatever they might be. But removing that option doesn't make sense to me. 
But I'm grateful to have a civil sharing of different points of view, regardless. I'm glad to hear your thinking on it, and appreciate it. 

Yup. Ticketmaster could not have capacity-planned for Taylor Swift to sell all dates to her tour on the same day.

(I just wanted to get in on your analogies.)
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This is another story that is about to get bent all of shape for what it really is...

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-employees-received-bonuses-hours-before-takeover.html

 

Annual scheduled bonus payments that typically come out on the 2nd Friday of March... yep which coincidentally happened last Friday...

 

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22 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

My problem in all of this is that if the FDIC  guarantees 100% of all deposits, why are there private banks vs a central government bank that works direct to the public? If the government assumes all of the risks of a guarantee, why does the private bank get to use the deposits as an investment vehicle? I am not a fan of the idea if where this entire set of logic could lead.

The central bank is the bank of last resort. They support the private retail/commercial banks, as they did here. 

Private banks are reigned in by regulations of reserve ratios and capital requirements and such. Its not perfect, because nothing can be, but you only know what you know and these regulations evolve reactively like they do in sports or any other facet of life. 

The FDIC is an insurance pool collected from banks on from insurable amounts at assessment rates. In this way, they were not ex-ante structured to cover the uninsured surplus. To fully cover 100% of deposits going ahead the insurance would logically cost more, and ultimately at a cost to depositors. 

So this is the Carl Sagan Apple Pie argument, which is roundabout correct but meaningfully dishonest. Imagine if a hurricane hits the Eastern seaboard and some people decried ‘FEMA shouldnt help out too much because their annual budget wasn’t projected to cover all of that and as a taxpayer i dont want it to cost more next year’. 
 

Its a sociopathic argument. 

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1 hour ago, Chewbacca said:
1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:
We did what I expected us to do. I'm still not convinced it was necessary. At this point, FDIC might as well just insure all deposits at all banks. It is clearly policy to do so. Might as well operate and extract premiums in accordance with that policy. Or maybe this policy only applies to special banking customers. I guess we will see. 

I think FDIC absolutely should insure all deposits. We need depositors to have faith that their money is safe.

All deposits? Everywhere?

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3 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

The central bank is the bank of last resort. They support the private retail/commercial banks, as they did here. 

Private banks are reigned in by regulations of reserve ratios and capital requirements and such. Its not perfect, because nothing can be, but you only know what you know and these regulations evolve reactively like they do in sports or any other facet of life. 

The FDIC is an insurance pool collected from banks on from insurable amounts at assessment rates. In this way, they were not ex-ante structured to cover the uninsured surplus. To fully cover 100% of deposits going ahead the insurance would logically cost more, and ultimately at a cost to depositors. 

So this is the Carl Sagan Apple Pie argument, which is roundabout correct but meaningfully dishonest. Imagine if a hurricane hits the Eastern seaboard and some people decried ‘FEMA shouldnt help out too much because their annual budget wasn’t projected to cover all of that and as a taxpayer i dont want it to cost more next year’. 
 

Its a sociopathic argument. 

FEMA is a federal agency, funding by tax payer dollars, with the purpose of helping the public in times of emergency. The FDIC is a government backed insurance company. Comparing the two like this is incredibly misleading. While FEMA does have an insurance product, that is not the part of the entity involved in disaster relief, and I don't expect the FEMA insurance product to pay out over its policy limits for flooding. 

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23 minutes ago, Mullet Free said:

Evidently this is the post that first got ball rolling. Austin analyst. Read pretty widely by VCs. (Like Thiel?)

 

 

 

People keep shitting on Thiel (founders fund) but there was a number of VC funds that pulled all their money and told all their PortCo to do the same. (YC, Coatue, Union Square to name a few...)

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36 minutes ago, Mullet Free said:

All deposits? Everywhere?

Yeah.  As has been mentioned above, I don't expect it for free.  Increase fees to cover it.  But a banking system where depositors know their money is safe is absolutely critical to a functioning economy.  

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  • blacklab changed the title to 2023 bank failures

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