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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

>how prominent VCs behaved

How did they behave? Try to pull their money out of a failing bank?

I would too ...

People like Jason Calcanis were screaming on Twitter like the world was going to collapse and that the contagion would take down regional banks hurting ordinary consumers.

All because he wanted the government to bail out his startups.

Did you miss the part of this press release where they announced that Signature Bank collapsed today? That makes it pretty clear that the contagion was real. Treasury’s actions make it abundantly clear as well.

There are 4,500+ commercial banks in the US with 70,000+ branches.

The idea that regional banks were going to collapse en masse because of the actions of one ineptly managed, highly unusual (in terms of customer and deposit mix) bank is ridiculous.

And trying to deliberately create a scare campaign so you can put political pressure on the FDIC to cover uninsured amounts is insidious and frankly evil.

Ok but did you really not address the fact that Signature Bank literally collapsed today? You know that is a different bank, correct? Did you see the stocks and sector ETFs for regional banks last week?

ETFs have weightings. SVB actually was a big portfolio piece for some ETFs. Especially because during COVID and the money printer boom, SVB stock went to the moon and hit $800 / share at one point.

I don't think ETFs are a good sign. One of my favorite bank ETFs, PGF is only down 6% on sentiment which isn't much.

One bank collapsing (because of crypto shenanigans, as I've read in another article) does not make for a contagion.

And you think Jason who-the-fuck-cares-about-what-he-thinks Calacanis somehow has a meaningful role in a scare campaign? He was just one of the scared people.

And guess what, the FDIC and the administration actually do believe there was a clear risk of regional banks going under. That's literally the topic of the article you're commenting under.

I feel this solution is too strong handed and I don't think the world would have ended if there wasn't a solution tomorrow and a hundred startups would have to take a 20-30% haircut on their raised funds by selling their claims, so I don't agree with Jason, but calling him evil for his standpoint and voicing it is what's ridiculous.

I see lots of screaming on twitter, I don't find this unusual or particularly bad.

Everyone would want their money back ...

But he was right? Certainly Yellen thought so. Why is screaming on twitter such a crime? Just block him.

> People like Jason Calcanis were screaming on Twitter like the world was going to collapse and that the contagion would take down regional banks hurting ordinary consumers.

If the 18th-largest bank in the country were to be allowed to collapse, with depositors losing money due to something they had no control over, why would any non-insane depositor keep their money in the 17th, or the 19th largest bank?

Any rational person will follow this line of reasoning to conclude that the only safe place to deposit your money would be a too-big-to-fail bank. And nobody wants to see that.

FDIC insures accounts to $250k. Why would any sane and rational person put more than $250k in any one account?

Because you don’t want a lot of accounts?

If SVB did fail with depositors not getting more than $250k back then it would be a contagion. I did find some VC tweets overly dramatic but the underlying messaging is still right.

Running to the Fed for help as soon as shit got real; made a lot of the bootstrapping libertarian ethos stereotypically espoused by a certain of VC seem very hollow.

Can't wait to start seeing their tweets railing about how unfair student debt relief is.

Deposit money in a bank and expect to be able to withdraw it later as agreed seems compatible with borrow money for education and expect to pay it back later as agreed.

They benefited with White Glove treatment and easy access to loans. They weren't depositing it there out of the goodness of their hearts. That's why SVB was hunting for yield.

When you deposit money at a bank, it is made very clear to you that only $250K is protected by the FDIC. Any more, and you either buy insurance for it or take a risk on losing it in a bank failure.

These depositors knew that and still acted irresponsibly, yet they are going to be made whole. It’s not that much different from taking out a loan you don’t understand.

Here here.

Luckily you don't have to wait, guys like jason were already making those sorts of comments

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1561902763478396930 https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1561899007256866816

Court records also show he spent months last year making suggestions to Musk on how to engineer a sufficiently hostile environment to mass-sack Twitter staff while evading severance arrangements.

But sure, these guys are so concerned with the posibility of ordinary people getting hurt.

This is why Thiel was first, he can stick to his ideological guns. He also forced Silicon Valley valley to setup the massive bluff that they were too big to fail (and maybe they are indeed to big to fail) that the government refused to call.

So meat is back on the menu. No need for Ramen gents.

I’ve got no problem with people wanting their money out of a bank.

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