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Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

I don’t have any inside scoop because I’m not in that world any more, so take this purely as my personal opinion, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that happens.

A lot of seemingly successful business models are hard to distinguish from the beneficial effect of ultra-low rates and a stable, growing economy[1] so the sudden raising of rates is going to hurt a lot. I also think the full effects are taking a while to filter through into the real economy so I personally don’t think we’ve seen the worst impacts yet. I see a lot of empty office and retail space and know that someone took out a loan to build or buy that building and now don’t have the rental income to pay back that loan. Like I say just one person’s opinion so take it with a pinch of salt.

[1] Hence the famous Buffett quote. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43237-it-s-only-when-the-ti...

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Intuitively, a hundred billion dollar auction with only a few hours to research, analyze and horsetrade must necessarily result in a lower winning bid.

Given all the uncertainty about the assets and other regional bank dominoes that are yet to fall, it seems like even the winner will be a low-ball offer.

Doesn't that mean a bigger haircut for uninsured depositors than would be the case if assets were methodically liquidated over a few weeks or months instead of a fire sale on one Sunday?

It sounds like they are selling the bank, not the assets. If they are selling the bank then I think the depositors will be made whole by the buyer. This will factor into the bid.

This is just my understanding, I am very open to being wrong.

> Intuitively, a hundred billion dollar auction with only a few hours to research, analyze and horsetrade must necessarily result in a lower winning bid.

Maybe. Or maybe the winner's curse will apply.

> Doesn't that mean a bigger haircut for uninsured depositors than would be the case if assets were methodically liquidated over a few weeks or months instead of a fire sale on one Sunday?

Maybe. Equally the longer depositors can't access their deposits, the worse things are. FDIC would rather get the depositors their 100% quickly than get maximum recovery for junior debt or equityholders. Now, if there's no offer coming in that covers 100% of deposits, then that gets more interesting; it's always possible that the FDIC will decide to keep running the bank and purse that kind of strategy.

Since you're on this thread..who normally runs the investment decisions inside of a bank, whether retail or investment. Is there a CIO office or is that the function of their Treasury department? Does it go by other names?

And in your experiences in 2008, what sort of strategy planning/what if scenarios were being played out since it was unprecedented and no one knew what was going to happen the next day

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