When a bank runs, you run. Trying to pin the blame on depositors is misguided. There are real villains to the SVB story. Regulators. Senior management. Goldman Sachs.
I don’t think the depositors should be blamed for attempting to get their money out of the bank once it became insolvent, but they certainly weren’t blameless in their own risk management prior to that.
Roku keeping half a billion dollars at svb without doing capitalization audits, or venture firms steering portfolio companies there without recommending backup banks is a business failure plain and simple. Those actions deserve scrutiny and the decision makers deserve blame.
> Roku keeping half a billion dollars at svb without doing capitalization audits, or venture firms steering portfolio companies there without recommending backup banks is a business failure plain and simple
One hundred percent. I was more attacking this conspiratorial line around so and so's tweets prompting the run.
They bought SVB’s loans at a $2bn loss to SVB [1] and then advised them to go to market with non-binding capital commitments [2][3][4] all while billing SVB $100mm for the trouble [5]. In short, they gave terrible advice, tanked the bank and then made bank, all while West Coast punditry began blaming depositors.
Roku keeping half a billion dollars at svb without doing capitalization audits, or venture firms steering portfolio companies there without recommending backup banks is a business failure plain and simple. Those actions deserve scrutiny and the decision makers deserve blame.