Hefeweizen

Man this doesn’t feel like the sand is shifting under our feet. A lot of unsettled and unseen movement going on.

Again responding to the first point: read the release from the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury. It’s opaque but this is the guarantee: Treasury Secretary Yellen will make up to $25 billion available as a backstop for this BTFP, but the Fed said it does not think it will have to draw on those funds. So likely this won’t cost taxpayers but it’s sure nice to have a 25 bill cushion for transactions. Can I get that? Edit: carrying party risk is a cost. Just in case that wasn’t clear. Go try to get a surety to post a 25 billion guarantee lfor you and get back to me on the premium. Because that’s what the taxpayer is doing, acting as the surety here.

This is all solid. The part of the solution that I find most troubling is I see the Fed and Treasury taking on the risk of holding the assets until a buyer is found. Some may say no harm, no foul if they’re disposed of at face value or higher, but I think there’s a real problem with moral hazard going forward. There is supposed to be risk in exchange for the compensation of lending. Remove that risk and you indirectly encourage aberrant lending behaviors. Then pass regulations to address it, which subsequently get diluted or removed; and you get the cycle of more complex but ever less efficient systems. I think there are a lot of good intentions here on the regulatory side but this story is just in its first few chapters.

Not responding to make a longcat but if you think the other banking institutions participating in the FDIC are the backstop I have news for you. This was brokered by the Treasury.

Yup. Exactly right.

I suspect the parsing of the statement is that the taxpayers are just carrying this for a little while as the assets are sold and depositors made whole. Fucking tired of government for the FAFO bailout but the alternative was pretty ugly. Like at a minimum a lot of economic damage and at worst a loss of confidence in our banking system which is a huge set of promises.

Yeah that’s a lie. But it was that or fuck around and find out with a contagion. At least one other bank in the same boat immediately. Watch next week.

Gerg is fucked. He won’t work at a public bank again unless it’s as a teller.

CEO, CFO, COO and CRO are at the best idiots and at worst criminals.

Truth was best stated earlier, and I’m paraphrasing: SVB was great at raising capital. They were terrible at allocating their assets. I don’t think their lending to VCs is really even an issue. Terrible risk management that is going to cause another round of reassessment and then further deregulation. Because nothing solves risk management issues better than letting the banks decide how to allocate their assets. This is how you build moral hazard. No lesson at all except maybe for Greg Becker. He’s toast.

Stanford is a funny school on that the student body is very liberal but they have some very conservative niches for business and law. Looks like someone didn’t know where they were, and got their feelings hurt.

Yes. The problem right now is ensuring that there isn’t a loss of confidence in banking. Everyone forgets how fragile confidence can be. Nassim Taleb will probably get a chance to write another great couple of books.

Yes. Use someone like fidelity who spreads it over institutions to keep it insured. This is a basic tenet of cash management and the government bookkeepers that I deal with take care of it for political subdivisions.

It’s going to get ugly. Unfortunately nothing I can share.

SVB is the big lender for a lot of tech. This is going to be a big deal.

Lol, that is going to fuck up some crypto miners in Texas.

Yeah concentration of wealth will do that… But it is median that is a lot more meaningful. Arithmetic mean is great for some analysis but in this case not so much

Gustav Holst sucks. There, I said it. The Planets is not accessible or fun for me to listen to. I think it might have been written about Uranus.

Don’t make me Noc (turne) you out. You giant Debussy.

Yes. And the only reason I didn’t list the Liberty Lunch concerts I went to is that they run together but that mosh pit was hilariously wild.

I’m completely in agreement on Tom Petty being crap. And fuck Journey. I managed to forget them, as they are forgettable crap, but my first roommate at Jester loved them. Fuck you, Steve, for playing that dogshit.

Been laughing my ass off at some of these posts. I’ll add the few that are probably unpopular but here goes: Smashing Pumpkins is pretty terrible but one of the best concerts I ever attended (Southpark Meadows right after it opened). 80s metal is pretty terrible outside of Megadeth, Metallica, and Maiden. But I’ll listen to Ratt’s “Round and Round” or the Crues bangers any time they come on the radio. The Cult is fantastic and anyone dissing them is wrong. Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Fallout Boy, Imagine Dragons, Creed, and Nickelback can be put on a plane to Afghanistan and play concerts for the Taliban forever. Country music should have stopped at Willie, Merle Haggard, and generally should go away. Good pop music should stick in your head for a while after you hear it. It’s supposed to be easy to listen to. I would point to Prince here and say meh. And @Patricio Swayze I part ways on Fugazi. I don’t fucking get it. At all.

Elmo is a caricature. Everything he does now is so predictable it’s sad.

If you like noir in general, you owe it to yourself to read Izzo’s Total Chaos. It’s spectacular, gritty, and his description of violence, food, and drink is remarkably good. Great story and a genre I didn’t know existed- Mediterranean Noir.