[dia80]

As I understand it SVB is insolvent primarily due to incompetence, the actual actions they have taken: take deposits and buying US treasury bonds are every day activities for a bank. There are no exotic derivatives or off balance sheet special purpose vehicles. It's hard to regulate that away.

[phamilton]

The most compelling piece of the puzzle to me (an engineer) is the notion of stress testing as part of regulation.

SVBs problems didn't appear overnight. With each rate hike they were a bit worse, but had they been forced to act earlier rather than later it would have helped a lot. Regular stress tests would have performed that function.

[gingerrr]

Too bad SVB's CEO lobbied so hard for those stress tests to no longer apply to them when Trump relaxed Dodd-Frank.

[markdown]

> SVB is insolvent primarily due to incompetence

And yet nobody knows who the fools running the bank were. We don't have their names all over the news. It's as if SVB was run automatically, with no humans at the helm.

The rich really get to destroy lives without consequence.

[twblalock]

The only people getting "destroyed" by this are shareholders in SVB.

[kristjansson]

You can go lookup up the officers of the company, if you want to burn them in effigy or something.

What are you really excoriating them for though? Destroying some capital? No one’s lives have been destroyed behind this mess

[thephyber]

“Nobody knows” Oh really? How sure are you that the CEO’s name, stock trades, and employment history aren’t being repeated by every major news outlet?

He’s already being painted as bogeyman, even before anyone has proven that he has done anything wrong.

[chaostheory]

You can regulate the minimum reserves banks have.

[twblalock]

That's not enough. SVB had reserves.

SVB had two other problems that would not be identified simply by looking at minimum amounts: duration risk and lack of liquidity.

[chaostheory]

From what I understood, they had the minimum reserves because SVB and other banks lobbied to have it lower.