Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by za_creature 19 days ago
Most bank runs tend to be driven by vibes, not numbers though.

The good news is that these folks seem to be in possession of a vibe-rator.

1 comments

> bank runs

Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI are not banks. (Also, we had the largest bank runs in American history three years ago. The ordinary American barely noticed.)

They're not profitable either, so the money has to come from somewhere, no?
> the money has to come from somewhere, no?

Yes. Equity investors. The ones who buy hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of American stocks a quarter.

And these equity-investors, do they use their own money to buy the (presumably non-voting) stocks?

Cause if that's the case, I see no reason for a government bailout should things go south. Nobody's pension would be affected by some private investor losing money on a bad investment.

But if that's not the case, then someone somewhere along the chain is acting as a bank, subject to a vibe-driven run.

If much of the money comes from passive funds, presumably the other stocks in those funds will need to be sold?
> these equity-investors, do they use their own money to buy the (presumably non-voting) stocks?

Yes [1].

> Nobody's pension would be affected by some private investor losing money on a bad investment

...pensions also invest in the stock market.

> if that's not the case, then someone somewhere along the chain is acting as a bank, subject to a vibe-driven run

You're confusing deeply unrelated concepts. Whether or not someone who loses money is politically sympathetic has nothing to do with whether they're at risk of a bank run.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20260319/html/f22...

I made no mention of anyone being politically sympathetic or otherwise. A private investor is _private_ and thus not subject to a government bailout. The argument for government bailouts used to be that "grandpa would lose his pension", I merely stated the terms that would make this non-applicable.

If pensions invest in the stock market, then they are de-facto acting as a bank. And last I checked, in the land of the free, you get to withdraw your 401k should you vibe with the decision to do so [please don't do this based on this post alone].