I can't count how many times I've read similar comments on HN in the last 10yrs
We’ve had 15 years of people getting billions for phone apps made in 12 months and forgotten in 6. Random individual software startups are valued more than basically the entire hardware industry under them. Bitcoin peaked out at 1.28 trillion and it still has no use beyond being a converter from dollars, to crypto, to dollars again with the occasional hand wavey “dude it’s totally completely secure and stable and everyone will use it in the future as a currency! Look how much I made by investing at the peak!” story.
Sure, you might claim those people are unhinged and don't count, but they'd say the same to you. Unless you actually start going to your broker and buy a bunch of PSQ your comments here carry as much weight as mine.
It's bad, but likely still a contained collapse (hopefully!)
I'll take that as a sign that the economy remains robust.
They quite literally changed the definition of a recession. Just because it's not a historically accurate recession does not mean we are not in, nor that are not heading into, one.
ZIRP is dead, there's no indication interest rates will go down any time soon, CPI indicates food costs are not moving, energy is still expensive, layoffs are picking up steam, housing is at it's most unaffordable time in history, etc.
You look at the gestalt sitting in front of you and you say "the economy remains robust". Lord, I wish I had your naivity^W^W^W^W^W^W^W optimism. I lived through the GFC and suffered the consequences of hedonistic money policy. History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes and all of this is starting to smell very familiar to me. I'm not in possession of a crystal ball but as it stands there is still too much money in the economy. The VAST majority of stock value since the GFC has been from stock buyback programs and not bottom line increases. That alone should tell you the possible origin of the next disaster.
There are a fuck-ton of factors that all have not-so-rosey outlooks.
Its amazing we dont have an actual game "sim America" and you get to fiddle with all the various economic levers in our tax code and see the output based on real data coming from various sources in the economic space (like farm, military, foreign subsidies, etc)
One that takes in the budget proposal from .gov and lets you fiddle with the model and such and crowdsource the best model outcomes through millions of game players - rewarded kind of like the lottery - everyone pays $1 a month to come up with the best model - its run through many simulations and the best model wins a bunch of cash. and then, wait for it, chatGPT writes an actual budget bill to be voted on.
I was out of work for 18 months during that period. Luckily I had a background in Animation and Architecture to fall back on and got a job designing tech companies when the crisis lifted.
2008 was worse though.
I wonder how many others did similar?
The government printed a ton of money and demand for loans crashed after the pandemic started. People even paid loans down. Many companies weren't borrowing much because of supply chain issues - why borrow if you can't use it? I'm not blaming the government - unemployment went through the roof for awhile and they had to protect people. But this is a side effect that no one really saw. That the treasuries would lose a lot of value because of super rapid interest rate increases while companies start eating away at their runway because no new investment is coming.
It all makes sense today but literally no one saw this coming a couple weeks ago.
> But this is a side effect that no one really saw.
Literally everyone except SVB saw that long term bonds would decrease in value post pandemic when interest rates increase. Interest rate increases lowering the value of bonds is quite literally the most basic rule of bonds.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/business/banks-government...
It's why the fed is currently bailing out the industry by being willing to take them all at par value, not market value, in exchange for cash.
OK, now comes 2022, inflation is high and you think the Fed will increase rates. Now your bonds have already dropped in price due to the anticipated rate hikes. The billion dollar question now is whether you believe the Fed's "it's fine, don't worry we can get inflation under control", and keep your bonds, or whether you believe aggressive rate hikes are coming? It's easy to ridicule in hindsight, but as the saying goes hindsight is 20-20.
No one said SVB is going to be insolvent on 3/10, but lots of people thought SV and investors were making bad decisions in general over the past several years.
SVB is a victim of its own culture. You would never be hired as an exec at SVB is you said "Lets keep all these deposits in 1-month Tbills and cash since most of these startups are garbage and are going to need to take withdrawals within a couple years."
The risk has been discussed for almost a year at least:
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/banks/us-banks-face-hi...
The short interest in SVB would indicate that alot of people saw this failure moths ago.
That and SI have been two of the most crowded trades by hedge funds since December. Borrow has been 50%+ for the banks. That would indicate that alot of people saw this coming 4 months go.