[dhbanes]

What do Peter Thiel's political party and contribution activity have to do with Silicon Valley Bank's solvency?

[kurthr]

Good question.

Who eased the Banking Regulation limits from $50B to $250B, allowing SVB to take Billions during the pandemic and invest them in low interest MBS without hedging them appropriately?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-dodd-frank/trum...

Is that a friend of Peter Thiel? Someone he's been a vocal political and financial supporter for?

[brightlancer]

Trump signed a bill passed by both houses of Congress; so the "who" is Trump, roughly 51 senators and roughly 213 representatives.

It's not like Thiel called up Trump and they made this happen over lunch.

[kurthr]

Wow, so party line vote? Interesting.

SVB lobbying using McCarthy's chief of staff. Hmmm.

Think Thiel might have made a call? Maybe since he had so much money (of his investees) in it? Wasn't he recommending SVB?

Just asking questions.

[brightlancer]

> Wow, so party line vote? Interesting.

I don't know. I didn't look up the vote. My point was that it wasn't only Trump and instead involved hundreds of others.

[opportune]

I have many reasons to dislike Thiel but being first in line for a bank run is not one of them.

SVB would likely have had a run eventually given that the increased withdrawal/desposit ratios of a cooling VC market would have eventually forced them to lower interest on customer deposits very low compared to other banks (because they had a lot of underperforming assets in their books in their HTM portfolio), at which point a lot of deposits would have been moved elsewhere naturally, forcing the sale of non-HTM securities and probably eventually forcing the sale of HTM securities at a loss (triggering insolvency).