skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well… SVB took on a lot of interest rate risk (rather than credit risk, which is what we’re more used to banks blowing themselves up with). Then rates rose and SVB were stuck holding long term fixed rate assets that weren’t yielding anywhere what they needed to. They probably didn’t see this as risk, since rates had been very stable for the last decade… but the mortgage market also sounded really safe in 2007.

If they actually weren’t taking on risk they’d have bought short term bonds to avoid rate risk, but that wouldn’t have made them any money.
Well, the term "bailout" usually implies two facts:

(1) Shareholders aren't zeroed in a bailout

(2) The government pays for a bailout

Neither is true here.
I'm surprised the top comment wasn't focusing on this bit of the statement:

"We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority."
Gun violence is the top killer of US kids–the pandemic made it worse
No profits? None, ever?

https://www.livemint.com/market/stock-market-news/svb-chief-...
It would be nice to have event-sourcing and associated tools set up where one could drop into a REPL of some collection of docker-compose'd microservices, and step through a heterogeneous collection of the stack--from HTTP request to db query, and back out again.

Certainly tools like App Dynamics and Datadog enable this app stack tracing, and Docker Compose enables composing services.

To be able to play back transactions backwards and forwards among services would be a dream.

Wondering if any folks have played with this kind of debugging?
Perfect policy doesn't exist. I prefer this to hard line actions that cause massive harm because it's impossible to account for all situations.
Definitions aside, look at the video from woodstock 69 -- not even one fat person. Look at a video of a current event in the US.
And who ensures that the insurance company has enough capital to pay out on that insurance?
The depositors did nothing here but put their own money in a bank account?

What possible nefarious motive are you implying?
> Thus, on one hand, I'm glad they're doing this, as it should help prevent wider bank runs

Could you expand? My first thought was that the bank who is in verge of crisis could tip over with additional burden.
Because a major component of this is human nature causing bank runs they are betting that by doing this upfront it will be cheaper than not doing it and risking a high number of similar bank runs in the coming month as word spreads it isn't safe to keep money over the insurance limit in banks because of the unrealized loses on bonds.
My read is that they see the shortage at SVB as relatively small and that they may be closing some marginal banks like Signature ahead of true insolvency/illiquidity to both protect depositors and minimize reactionary withdrawals across the broader market.

And it sounds like they have the authority to just do this on a Sunday, so it doesn’t sound like any rules being changed.

If I was a banker with a marginal portfolio, I wouldn’t be encouraged by this. Depositors are making it out, but banks are being aggressively shuttered to make that happen.
surely it's not on HN throwaway to do all the foreseeing here? there are people whose fulltime job is to monitor the banks.
This isn’t necessarily a Glass–Steagall issue as SVB was primarily in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
All of the money is there. There's no money printing. The issue is the money has been invested in longer-term securities and no bank is prepared for 25% of deposits to be wired out in a single day...generally they hold around 1-2% in cash.
I think (but am honestly not 100% sure here) that the argument is if other banks are going to have to pay for SVB being greedy, it is in some sense punishing banks for not being greedy enough; as while, sure, the SVB investors are getting hit: 1) a lot of them already made a lot of money years ago (and potentially exited), 2) many of the executives apparently literally sold out last month, and 3) they were hoarding a lot of deposits that other banks couldn't get because they weren't being risky enough. But so like, saying banks are paying dearly for this is strange, as it is the wrong banks... and, by extension, the customers at those banks, who are in turn making decisions about what bank to use in the future.
So they made their decision, everyone can move on. I just hope nobody forgets how prominent VCs behaved during the brief period of uncertainty. The idea of some noble class of investors championing disruption is dead. They're just a bunch of rent seekers like everybody else. For some silly reason I had some respect for the startup industry before this, now I see it as a joke.

It's great at a personal level that "founders" and startup employees didn't have to do without. But it's important to remember that they no longer automatically deserve any credit for taking risks and doing something new. It might as well be a bunch of FAANG employees
I had no idea that was an option. My google-fu is failing me, what is that called? Who are the providers? Seems like it would be a mega capital intensive insurance product.

edit: this is way out of my wheelhouse, so an actual answer would be educational.
Because the shareholders lose their shareholding.
That's called a tax.
My point is that you imply current valuations are unrealistic and must fall back to reality, which presumably is realistic valuations, but you neglect to define both unrealistic valuations and realistic valuations. You know, in a way that allows me to take a company, look at say, balance sheets, and tells me which is which.

I guess I made you give some examples, which is already a big improvement.
The “special assessment” is levied directly on banks, and is referenced in 12 U.S.C. 1817(b)(5):

In addition to the other assessments imposed on insured depository institutions under this subsection, the Corporation may impose 1 or more special assessments on insured depository institutions in an amount determined by the Corporation if the amount of any such assessment is necessary

(A) to provide sufficient assessment income to repay amounts borrowed from the Secretary of the Treasury under section 1824(a) of this title in accordance with the repayment schedule in effect under section 1824(c) of this title during the period with respect to which such assessment is imposed;

(B) to provide sufficient assessment income to repay obligations issued to and other amounts borrowed from insured depository institutions under section 1824(d) of this title; or

(C) for any other purpose that the Corporation may deem necessary.
Both insured sweep accounts and non-FDIC depository insurance exist.
> Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed.

how do you interpret this part? what is an example of somebody who would be an unsecured debtholder? as in somebody with a stake in SVB the buisness?

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SIVB/
you know thats how ALL insurance works right?
Fujitsu Preps Monaka Datacenter CPU to Succeed A64FX
I guess it's because redesigning the UI is so much easier than rewriting the backend. There's not as many edge cases to test for, or that many dependencies.
You're not alone. Your experience echoes my experience. Something has happened and the nature of our work has changed from what it was even 5 years ago. I am also frustrated.

What can you do? At a large level, nothing. You're not in a role where you can make massive changes in a medium to large sized company, let alone the tech industry in general.

However, you are in charge of yourself and you do have some ability to help your family. So focus on that. One of the most helpful statements I've ever been told is: "Where people have abdicated responsibility, there lies opportunity". Another way to look at it is to go "look" or "research" the areas where others are not paying attention for [insert reasons here].

It sounds like you are coming across people who are not *appropriately* responsible for their positions. Why? Is there an opportunity there? You might have to play the long game.

Another thing I have personally realized which is similar to something you mentioned is that you do have the power to do your own thing, even though the risk might be high. I am working full time (I love my job) but am taking time to explore things I can build on my own as a backup in areas that the rest of the tech community seems to be paying little to no attention to _or_ they even say is impossible. There are so many opportunities to push the envelope and you can leverage the fact that other developers are too lazy to do the same to work harder and smarter.

This was a really low thought wall of text / brain dump. I apologize. I hope there's a nugget of practical value somewhere, haha.
Sort of. This emergency liquidity program is only for one year but SVB has some 10-year stuff on the books. There could be losses, especially if rates continue to increase.
Hashi Stack to Break $1B, with Profits, in Two Years
"Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law."

The fungibility of money aside, my personal taxes will not pay for this.
Translation: cost is being bore by the taxpayer but people are staking out the stop posts on their analysis to avoid admitting it.
I mean I was laid off (and this ain't my first rodeo) so know exactly how unemployment works. In California, you get a check that represents a totally normal American wage and your kids will qualify for Medicare and probably you and your spouse will qualify for a reasonable market plan.

In my new state of Oregon, you again get a totally reasonable wage, my kids have better medical insurance I did when I was employed, and my wife and I qualify for extremely subsidized health insurance. Basically my mortgage is paid for and my kids and I are insured. It's time limited but six months is enough time to find another job and the healthcare is not time limited.

Realistically the us has a solid safety net. At least in all the states I've lived in, which are the ones most tech employees are in
I enjoyed the article. Long time since I programmed in Java. I recall being recommended a book called Java Concurrency in Practice and it languishing on my shelf.

I had a few notes:

1. It is really nice to have such thorough documentation. Even if a programmer doesn’t always have or make the time to read it.

2. I _think_ I remember reading an interview with Peter Norvig in Coders at Work where he talks about programmers never having the time to fully grok their API docs (it may well have been a more general statement about rushing to get stuff done).

Some time ago I personally learned a virtualization discovery API whereby one could make some calls and learn, through some sort of traversal, how a topology of VMs was laid out. My title at the time was Intermediate Software Developer. I remember I was pretty happy with my solution and shared during standup that it was working well but was kind of slow, and that there was another, more complicated and finicky type of traversal mentioned in the docs, and that my reading of the docs was that learning and coding this other method was necessary or helpful is some use cases but that for our situation it would not make a difference and would just add complexity. Well within a couple of weeks another team member - Junior Software Developer - read the same docs and tried out the more finicky version and wouldn’t you know, the discovery process suddenly became blazing fast.
Very nice. Anyway to add an option to install elsewhere other than ~/ ?
There was some tail wagging the dog. Depositors wanted to be made whole because the bank had to disclose bond sale, bond purchase, and stock sale activities as a package deal. Each activity individually might have snuck under the radar, but together that spooked the depositors.

Then the CEO says there's not a problem which you only need to say if there is a problem. That didn't help either.
Interesting that they're announcing this for SVB and Signature. I infer from this that they will backstop the depositors at these two banks, and they assume that by doing so no other banks will be 'run' by depositors.
That is not how I'm reading this. FDIC insurance covers the first 250k from an insurance pool all banks pay into. What I'm reading is that there will be an additional fee will be paid by other banks to make SVB depositors whole. If I'm mistaken, please tell me.

"Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law."
The way I interpreted "households" in the statement was that it was referring to the regular folks who are employed by many VC-backed start ups that banked with SVB. Employees at tech companies in the US get paid twice a month(generally the 1st and the 15th.) This backstopping while certainly bailing out VCs yes, also ensures that regular people working for those VC-backed startups will get their paycheck this week.
I view it kind of like parenting. Depending on what kind of kid you’ve raised you may not want to signal to them that no matter what you’ll financially bail them out. Hoping they’ll make the right choices.
> Using `<` doesn't change that model. You can write `< somefile.txt whatever`.

If you showed that without context it would look like some prefix/lispy notation so no, you are just showing how bad it is
My reading is that the "assessment" (tax) will be borne by all banks, not just the bank that fails.

My gut says that the incidence will fall primarily on deposit holders (likely in the form of marginally lower interest rates), and not significantly on bank equity holders, but I suspect it'd take an econ phd to fully parse that out.
> Would love to know what law/regulatory framework she is referring to.

This is not some conspiratorial secret. Banks pay premiums to the FDIC for their insurance, and it's a requirement of all chartered banks. The FDIC has the right to backstop deposits in excess of the deposit limit by invoking a "systemic risk" clause (I'm not sure exactly which law this comes under, whether it's some of the original laws that created the FDIC, or more recent post-financial crisis updates). When the FDIC fund gets depleted, they have the right to invoke a special assessment against banks.

> Now expect a contagion effect it next week

The whole point of doing this is to prevent a contagion. The reason there was a bank run against SVB was a mix not just that their asset values had deteriorated (that was well known for some time), it's that their non-diversified deposit base of VC-funded start ups have gradually needed to up their withdrawals since early 2022. SVB would have survived if there wasn't a run on the bank, and the whole purpose of this action was to prevent further runs by saying that deposits will be protected.
That's the XP way of not sharing FileChannels.
This probably sealed the deal:

> We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority.

Two closures in three days is a sign that you have to take this very seriously.
As a regular joe declaring chapter 7 bankruptcy is nearly impossible these days anyway. You’ll be on the hook for a substantial percentage of your discharged debts under chapter 13. 10 years later they even reopened my parents bankruptcy because they came into a relatively small sum of money from a medical law suit.
I'm not sure. I've been with a company that's switched to a bi-weekly. But not sure of the reasoning. But probably something to do with payroll predictability.
Why bother? It seems all deposits are in fact insured regardless of what rules say.
You could argue for a 3% haircut "stupid tax" for such a CFO's account. But what would be the downstream implications? Money would move to big banks, making them even bigger.
It's not a bailout it's a backstop. All shareholders of SVB are done for.
So very cool.
Seeing how quickly David Sacks turned from anti government to practically begging the government to save him was one of the highlights of this weekend for me.

It’s almost a shame they couldn’t carve out a few exceptions for those who don’t believe in regulation.
A 3 person tech startup with more than $750k is not going to buy treasures.
Because SVB lacks the liquidity to pay out the bank run but doesn't lack the assets, at least as long as you only pay out deposits (which is what they are doing i.e. "Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected.").

The thing is that without this decision there would be two problems:

1. deposits would only re-accessable much later, too late for most small Companies to survive

2. depending on law/regulation aspects I don't know much about it also may have been a possibility that Stockholder get payed out first and similar
"Punishing the sinful" isn't about morals, it's about incentives, and ensuring a level playing field where sinning doesn't improve your long-term competitiveness.

Will senior management have to return their 2021 performance bonuses? If not, successful sinning is just a matter of ensuring you cash out early.
Preventing thousands of job losses and helping small businesses stay afloat during crises that they should not reasonably have to expect does have a positive return on investment for taxpayers.

It is absolutely valid to interpret this incident as a regulatory failure and the failure of our legal system to enact sufficient penalties on those responsible, leading to some amount of moral hazard, which means that problems like this might arise again in the future.

But you are also arguing that, in general, spending taxpayer money to help businesses and individuals ride out random crises and catastrophes is not a good use of that taxpayer money. I and I think most sound-minded economists would disagree with you, on a purely mechanical cost-benefit basis.
It would be neat to be able to add durations to dates. This would let me e.g. get all files that are newer than an hour: ls | where modified > time now - 1hr
The "also announcing a similar" bit is a subtle hint that one may also want to read the previous paragraph :-)

"After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer."
So 3 out of 7 Circle USDC bank partners failed in a week.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/03/10/scrutiny-falls-o...
Banks use deposits to extend loans to other customers. A narrow bank wouldn't do that.
7B is the default. If it's quantized to 4 bits, that's a 3.9 GB file.
I'll see your moral hazard and raise you a social media contagion.
It’s a fair point but with high enough resolution (and perhaps GPS baked into the trusted data) I suspect it would be very hard to actually forge a digital image from an analog source.

Likewise depth fields and other potential forms of sensor augmentation.
Impossible? we are programmed to LOVE all of those things, except for being alone, which can't be learned away.

Is there anyone with special genetic makeup that naturally rejects idleness and high-calorie foods?
You mean those executives that sold their shares of the bank weeks before, ending up with with fat stacks and completely unaffected?

Yeah I kinda doubt they'll get what's coming to them unfortunately. Insider trading's only a crime when it's poor people doing it.
“They” as a group then reduce the interest rates they can pay their depositors because they have extra costs to pay for SVB’s depositors gains.
12 U.S.C. 1817(b)(5) is the “regulatory framework” you’re looking for. The FDIC can levy a special assessment for literally any purpose it seems necessary.
Taxpayers are not paying for this, banks collectively are.
All bank deposits should be guaranteed by the state.

Just like tap water is guaranteed to be drinkable, ... Bank accounts are the basis of many things.
Probably the best possible outcome.

Protect depositors, allow stock holders to get wiped, prevent a cascade of runs from fear.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64934348
How does breathing in and out of a paper bag create vacuum? As soon as you inhale, the atmospheric pressure collapses the bag. Bellows are different because they can hold their shape: if you seal all the ends and then expand the bellows, you will have vacuum and the 1atm of pressure trying hard to stop you from doing that.

The same with hot air balloons, there is no vacuum at play there, unless I'm miss-understanding what you're saying.
I used to use this system in undergrad at the University of British Columbia, one of about ten or so installations. It was pretty cool at the time. I (dimly) recall it had something like output redirection, when you run your compiled executable, you can assign virtual devices ("PRINT" for the printer, e.g.) to various channels, and avoid storing files, which was constrained and costly.

A few things I can't believe we lived with -- a flat file-space, and I think 8.3 file-names?

It ran a lot of "standard" IBM OS/VS utilities, and I spent many happy hours in my summer internship squeezing a few extra milliseconds out of my FORTRAN-H executables.
> Instead of assuming that everyone will act in good faith

Musk never acts in good faith. Just one example is his desperate and failed six month attempt to back out of the Twitter deal that he himself proposed and agreed to:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/why-musk-gave-up...

The correct assumption when dealing with Musk is that he will act in bad faith. That is his track record.
Looks great! Does it work on Windows please?
What’s the moral hazard in the FDIC insuring a much larger number than 250k?
I just explained one solution on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LalwaniVikas/status/1635035951654387712
The money is not there. Just because a bond is valued at $100 dollars does not mean that 100 exists in cash somewhere. Bonds and debt create money but they don't create cash. Bank withdrawals are cash (essentially).

Svb failed not because they didn't have money but because they have no cash.

Now the federal reserve, the main issuer of cash, announces that tomorrow, you can take out 209 billion in cash. That is literally money printing.

Edit, to illustrate: suppose I deposited $100 into svb. They bought a bond. That means the government can now spend my $100. Now the government has an asset worth $100 AND SVB has an asset worth more than $100 in a few years. Thus the total assets of the government and myself is MORE than the $100 I put in. Except one of those assets (the bond) cannot be exchanged for cash at face value. To say the money is there is true. The dollars are there. But the cash is not. My 100 in cash is now with some government agency somewhere. If the fed turns around now and says they will give me 100 cash for the deposit that is stuck in a ten year bond, then both the government AND myself will have 200 cash total from my original deposit of 100 (and there is also some bond out there with some monetary value). Thus cash was created which means money was printed. Which is inflationary which is going to further pressure the fed.
> If payment is done by other banks, doesn't that serve as mitigation?

Seems the exact opposite. Why would any bank ever conduct risk assessment if their potential failure will be paid by the industry as a whole. This effectively tells any other bank that might be fearing for a bank run to stock up on super risky assets and to let the dice roll to see if they end up winning big, or if their competitors end up paying for their losses.