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Comment by amanj41 | Hacker News Reader

In a real bailout wouldn't SVB continue to exist?

My POV too. I was listening to Bloomberg radio yesterday and the people were all talking about if this is a bailout, and if voters would see it as a bailout.

I thought the reason people were pissed at the 2008 bailouts because the actual too-big-to-fail corporations (less Lehman and WaMu) were enabled to continue existing, with their shareholders still owning part of the corporations.

Here it's only the depositors who are being made whole.

> I thought the reason people were pissed at the 2008 bailouts because the actual too-big-to-fail corporations (less Lehman and WaMu) were enabled to continue existing, with their shareholders still owning part of the corporations.

Struggling to take you in good faith, you're wrong either way. Working people were pissed about the 2008 bailout because they were left empty-handed while Wall Street banks and CEOs got bailed out. Your comparison falls flat because there are no working people involved in the SVB situation.

Well sure, of course. I don't understand why you are "struggling" to take me in good faith because I left out the part about struggling people. I don't remember it off the top of my head because my financial situation at the time was such that I was so low I didn't have to worry about losing a home or other assets (all I had was a really cheap car, a low end computer, my bed and couch were inflatable).

> Your comparison falls flat because there are no working people involved in the SVB situation.

Sure there are plenty of people dependent on SVB deposits for their paychecks. And it sucks to be an SVB employee. But the shareholders are effectively wiped out, unless and until SVB's assets are eventually sold for more than its liabilities.

You can think whatever you want, but regular working American people, in aggregate, do not consider themselves as having anything at all in common with anyone remotely associated with Silicon Valley startups, which are universally despised by the American people at large. The fact that nobody in Silicon Valley has ever appeared to care what they think until now makes it even worse. These sentiments are so entrenched that this will not change for at least a few generations in the best case. It's just way too late.

Being pissed off or feeling despite takes more effort than just not caring.

I'm annoyed at the support for Carnival and other cruise lines during the early days of the COVID pandemic. I even sent an email (which was answered) to the local Fed branch saying that they should backstop consumer credit card debt the way they were backstopping corporate loans.

A "bailout" is a mitigation of consequences, generally supported by an injection of cash or a guarantee thereof. It can apply to any class of interests in an enterprise. "Shareholders were bailed", "bondholders were bailed out", "depositors were bailed" -- these are all possible sentences.

Shareholder bailouts are the worst but there are negative consequences to all cases.

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