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Comment by actually_a_dog | Hacker News Reader

Banks are not being "bailed out." Depositors are. SVB no longer exists. Now, you can certainly argue over the merits of bailing out depositors, but disingenuously framing it as a "bank bailout" is not the position to start from.

On that point, the government does have an obligation to "provide for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States," and that is clearly one of the overarching purposes of the Constitution itself. I find it hard to argue that saving tens of thousands of jobs[0] but by making the depositors whole, when the assets of SVB, illiquid though they may be, can cover 60-90% of the cost, is at all the wrong thing to do. This is literally part of why we have a government, and why markets are regulated at all.

[0]: I couldn't find a good source on the number of jobs, but that seems like the correct order of magnitude, anyway.

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This is really semantics to me. Customers gave SVB their money because they paid high returns and engaged in risky behavior. That money was used to fund exec and employee salaries. People who take risks should bear the responsibility. Whether the bank still exists or not doesn't really concern me, since the people who ran it into the ground can turn around and do the same thing tomorrow.

> "provide for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States,"

We'll have to agree to disagree that bailing out well-off startup founders and employees is the best way to provide for the general welfare of the United States. I'd start with people undergoing medical bankruptcy, then about a million other categories of people before I got to them. Either way, I'd prefer the accounting to be transparent. The FDIC isn't acting as a corporation here, so they shouldn't be a corporation.

"People who take risks should bear the responsibility."

Exactly. In Russia we had people who'd serially deposit money into the shadiest of banks offering highest returns. Deposits are ensured upto some amount, so they'd collect interest, get their money from the state after a bank bankrupts (while the bank owners are enjoying stolen money in a no extradition country) and go to the next bank.

SVB was a bank that mostly served corporate operations accounts for tehc nad healthcare startups and small businesses. People were not banking there for high returns. This is not at all about risky investments (ffs the bank liquidity crunch came from long term bonds being too illiquid -- not exactly exotic asset management). The accounts impacted are mostly payroll, daily operating accounts (for expenses/manufacturing expenses/real estate lease payments etc).

The bank managers and investors are not being bailed out -- they have already lost everything.

You seem to be attaching some kind of anger for some ill conceived and non existant "happy go lucky risk wall street bet" type of activity, when this is about buisnesses losing their operating accounts who did nothing wrong except for have accounts at this bank instead of the next bank over.

> This is not at all about risky investments

Please stop repeating this. It is 100% about risky investments. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/11/silicon-val...

Also, if your entire clientbase is in a single groupchat, you should be much more prepared for a bank run. This is like common-sense stuff. The fact that this is a bad business model isn't really my concern.

> The bank managers and investors are not being bailed out -- they have already lost everything.

The bank managers will walk away having earned millions of dollars in salary and bonuses, funded by risky bets, and the investors will walk away without bearing the consequences of the risks SVB took. Their investments in SVB went to zero, but there's still money that's been lost.

It is not at all about risky investments! It’s about poorly managing risk, which is entirely different. The underlying instruments are among the lowest-risk securities on the planet, the risk that killed SVB was in the investment strategy.

You can call it whatever you want. They lobbied to not be subject to liquidity stress tests, and then didn’t have liquid assets when customers came looking for their money. That was risky. They could have invested in shorter term contracts but they didn’t.

You really think employees of SVB bank clients should bear the burden of decisions made by their employers without their input, likely without their knowledge, and very little reason to care 99.99% of the time? Quick, without looking at your paystub, what bank does your employer use?

I don't disagree that doing things like addressing medical debt are worthy ways to promote the general welfare, but let's not pretend it's an either/or, thing here, either. You don't seem to want to acknowledge the full context of the situation, which seems at least on the edge of disengenuousness. This as well, after you try to frame it as a "bank bailout" then backpedal when called on it.

I believe employees understand that working at a small, highly-leveraged startup is risky, whether or not they know which bank they use. The employees, by law, get 2 months wages guaranteed by the government (under the WARN act), and should have additional savings from their highly-paid SV tech job (which is partially highly paid because the employer engages in risky behavior) which I think is plenty of cushion to get their finances in order.

But the real problem I have is with special treatment. There's plenty of people out there who get screwed by their employer's negligence/malice but the only ones who get bailed out beyond the letter of the law are the ones with the networks, money, and influence to make noise about it.

> but let's not pretend it's an either/or, thing here, either.

But it is. You either spend money in 1 place, or you spend it in another.

> "bank bailout"

This isn't like a well-defined term as far as I'm aware, so 2 situations where banks/customers rely on the government to come to the rescue when risks don't pay out can both be called bailouts, whether or not the company remains in tact. You see plenty of media organizations and people calling this a bailout despite the fact that the bank is being dissolved, because it's a colloquial term.

"very little reason to care"

Maybe they should care. Why shouldn't an employee care about financial stability of their employer?

Be honest: have you ever asked an employer what bank they use when you were interviewing? Is this your general policy? 10:1 says it's not, and you haven't. Even if you're the exception, I'm sure 99% of employees have literally never asked this question. Think about why that might be.

When I cared about stability I picked a big employer from which one would expect prudency. When I worked at a small company, I expected it to get ruined at any moment and planned accordingly. Since I became self-employed, I care a great deal about which bank I use and never put all eggs in one basket.

As I said: maybe they should.

But, you didn't actually ask. And that is literally my point.

I care about stability in my employment situation as much as the next canine. I've worked at 4 startups, each with under 150 employees apiece. I've asked questions about funding, client base, growth plans, etc. All the normal "hard" questions you have to ask as a prospective startup employee. Not once have I ever asked where they banked. Not once has anyone I know asked where their employer banked.

I would submit that if the banking system becomes fragile enough that asking about such a thing is actually a good idea, we have bigger problems as a whole, which would make a prospective employer's answer to any such question irrelevant. And if that's the case, why ask?

Another way to put it: it's not employees and consumers putting "all eggs in one basket." It's the economy as a whole. If there's one thing that the 2008 financial crisis proved, it's that if the banking system gets gummed up, second and third order effects very quickly begin to set in and ruin things for everybody.

Now, if you know how to reconstruct the banking system to avoid this, I'd like to hear it. But as long as my employer's payroll funds aren't stored under the CEO's mattress, I think I'm good with that.

I understand, but my point is that most people don't need it -- they either use proxy for that or already accept startup-level risks. So bankruptcy of a startup due to poor bank choice is just one of many failure modes for startups.

"we have bigger problems as a whole" I don't think so, at least based on Russia's experience. In the previous decade plenty of banks got closed with businesses losing money, but economy was ok and the banking ecosystem got healthier.

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