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by riskneutral 1189 days ago
As restaurant's customers actively trust the restaurant to not jeopardize their health.

The banking equivalent of Lastpass getting hacked and not disclosing it would be if a bank was insolvent and instead of rightfully disclosing that it instead just kept it under wraps. That would be accounting fraud and executives would be charged with crimes like they were in the Enron scandal. SVB experienced a sudden liquidity problem, not a solvency problem. Solvency and liquidity are two separate things.
2 comments
neilwilson 1189 days ago
"SVB experienced a sudden liquidity problem, not a solvency problem. "

They had a solvency problem.

The MBS they held with a six year duration didn't generate sufficient income. That meant they couldn't meet the cash letter from the Fed. That's why the FDIC was called in.

The whole strategy was based upon holding uninsured non-interest bearing liabilities for the duration - ie the cash of startups in burn mode.

It wouldn't have mattered if they had insured the HTM portfolio in the traditional manner.

Any sought equity investment in the bank would have had to be sufficient to get the net income up to the level where they could meet the terms of the cash letter from the Fed. I doubt anybody would have gone for that when the alternative was to attend the FDIC auctions and pick up the assets on sale.

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antibasilisk 1189 days ago
But it was insolvent, all of them are.
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jsjohnst 1189 days ago
No, it wasn’t insolvent until the bank run on Thursday. Very few, if any, banks can handle a $40 billion transfer off their balance sheet unexpectedly, but a bank CEO should’ve known their reckless actions could easily have triggered one, especially one with very high deposits and very few customers (as in, it doesn’t take many customers to decide to move their deposits to cause a real hurt).
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antibasilisk 1189 days ago
>Very few, if any, banks can handle a $40 billion transfer off their balance sheet unexpectedly

The conclusion from this isn't that it was solvent and suddenly became insolvent. The conclusion is that almost every bank is insolvent.

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jsjohnst 1189 days ago
> The conclusion is that almost every bank is insolvent.

In as far as “the sky is blue”, except when it’s cloudy, or night time, or the sun goes supernova.

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