ChiGoose

Considering the shrinking US workforce and the fact that we have far more job openings than workers, we actually could probably absorb a significant number of immigrants into the economy. Our immigration system is hopelessly broken. So long as it is easier to get here illegally than legally, you’re going to have these problems. We need to drastically scale up our immigration courts and legal pathways.

I just cannot even begin to bring myself to give a ***** about the media coverage.

I guess DoJ is shy to indict former presidents for obstruction. Wish they weren’t though. He’s under investigation for it. At this point I hope they indict him because I’m tired of the MAGA obsession over the guy.

Or not, actually. If you apply the law equally to each situation, it would be correct not to indict Hillary but to indict Trump. But applying the law equally to everyone is the antithesis of MAGA. Rules and laws are only applicable to the “other” while anything against MAGA, no matter the evidence, is dismissed as biased.

Hey, Capone went for tax evasion. If they can’t get him on the bigger crimes (likely because he is a walking typhoon of obstruction), there’s no shame in getting him on the lesser, easier to prove, crimes. Also, it’s incredible how people are still willfully ignorant about the Clinton investigation. Guess it fits their narrative, so who cares about the facts so long as it feels good?

We spent the decades after WWII establishing an international order that put us on top. We set the rules and for the most part, we ran the show. Yes, that involves supporting foreign countries because doing so maintains the international structure with us on top. And yes, there were plenty of mistakes made, but by and large, the US has dominated the global scene. Now we have the most recent version of “America First” (look up the previous versions. History doesn’t repeat but it definitely rhymes). Somehow, these people believe that abandoning the system that puts us on top in favor of isolationism and rebuffing our allies will somehow benefit us. Instead, all it will do is create a giant power vacuum that will be filled by whoever can exercise more soft power: Europe or China. Who are you betting on in that scenario? Ukraine may not be an ally, but it’s definitely in our strategic interest to completely demolish the army of one of our adversaries at the cost of a fraction of our military budget without risking US troops. It also sets a deterrent against China in Taiwan. Supporting Ukraine benefits the US. It is strengthening our place as the global leader. Abandoning them will be a tremendous win for Russia, China, and those wishing to diminish the US.

Obama was incredibly wrong about Russia

The FDIC will sell the assets of the banks and use that to cover the depositors. If the sale does not cover the costs, the FDIC has a fund that all the partner banks pay into, which can be used to make depositors whole. If all of that fails to cover the costs (which doesn’t seem to be the case if the damage can be limited to the two banks), the FDIC has a $100 billion line of credit with the treasury. If it uses that, then taxpayers actually probably make money on the deal. Failing all of that, you would likely need an act of Congress to tap taxpayer funds.

Nah, more likely Tbilisi, Kyiv, and Transnistria. If those go well, maybe he’ll want Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius too.

Very surprised but very happy with this. Curious to see the contract details.

COVID and the response to COVID changed the risk environment and increased inflation. Most financial institutions adjusted their risk portfolios to reflect this. SVB did not. You can go off on whatever rambling non-sequitur you want, but it’s just going to make you look foolish.

Making a lot of assumptions there, buddy. Maybe take a beat and go touch some grass. Or read what I actually wrote instead of what you seem to wish I wrote.

If you have a coherent thought or question, I’d be happy to address it. But it seems like you just want to ramble about anything and everything and try to connect dots that aren’t there. SVB failed because they had unbelievably incompetent risk managers. Signature Bank failed because they were heavily invested in the the Ponzi scheme that is crypto. If your theory was correct, we’d already have dozens and dozens of bank failures. But you’re wrong, so we haven’t. Inflation is a problem and it was exacerbated by the easy money policies of the current and previous administrations as a response to COVID. They would argue it was a necessary risk to prevent a broader collapse, but your mileage may vary. That does not excuse the poor strategies of the two failed banks.

You were so close! So close to getting it and being right! But then you couldn’t help yourself but to veer off a cliff into being wrong. I can’t blame you, seems most of PPP is doing the same thing. Inflation played a part in this only because the risk management at SVP somehow could not see the obvious: the Fed would continue raising rates through the end of 2022 and into 2023. This was staggeringly obvious to everyone except (apparently) the risk managers at SVB. Basically every other bank is managing their risk portfolio to account for the inflation and the expected rate increases. If this was solely and only inflation’s fault, all of them would be failing too. But they’re not because this isn’t a story of inflation wrecking the banking industry, or wokeness, or ESG. It’s a story of a poorly run bank that was uniquely situated to fail. Banks with good risk management didn’t have this problems. DEI or not. ESG or not. The large bank I used to work for that has a ton of DEI stuff is doing great. Because this has nothing to do with that. If your theory was correct, that this was because of inflation, it would already be systemic and far more than two banks would have failed already. Isolate your variables before going off on a limb so you don’t come out looking like a fool. But hey, if you really want to be wrong, I guess I can’t stop you.

You are 100% absolutely correct. I meant to state that government bonds are generally safe but SVB’s investment strategy was not. Appreciate the catch. Not always easy to type all that out on mobile. And yeah, the DEI stuff is completely irrelevant. It has absolutely nothing to do with this but I guess there’s a lot of gullible people out there.

Financial reporters: SVB’s collapse was due to poor risk management in the face of raising rates. The dumbest people in the world: SVB had DEI, therefore, it’s failure was due to DEI even though literally every bank does DEI and they didn’t have these problems. Correlation isn’t causation, people.

If anyone is interested in what actually happened with SVB, I’d recommend this episode of The Indicator. The main points: - SVB’s deposits shot up in 2020 during a boom in tech companies, which make up most of its customers. - SVB put the deposits into treasury bonds which are generally safe bets. - However, SVB had three vulnerabilities: 1. The bonds had long maturities, so they cashed out way into the future. When interest rates went up, the value of the bonds went down. More than half of SVB’s investments were in these bonds (compared to 25% average of most banks). SVB also did not hedge to balance against the risks of interest rates going up 2. SVB’s business was concentrated in the tech sector, which is very sensitive to interest rates. With turmoil in the tech sector, they were getting fewer new deposits to offset the risk of devaluing bonds. 3. SVB had a disproportionate amount of large deposits. Only 10% of its deposits were covered by FDIC’s insurance compared to an average of 50% for other banks. This drove customer panic. - Moody’s recently told SVB that it might downgrade its credit due to the risk of its bond value decreasing. - SVB planned to avoid a downgrade by selling its bonds at a loss and then bringing in new investors. They sold the bonds but had trouble getting new investments. - People could then see the trouble SVB was in and it’s depositors panicked and pulled $42 billion (20%) of the deposits. So you have a bank that managed its risk poorly and collapsed due to the unique nature of its business combined with bad management. Or you can be an idiot and claim this was wokeism or whatever.

(Citation needed)

I think we’re probably mostly in agreement about the depositors. They did nothing wrong here and letting them fail can really risk harm to the economy. If the damage is limited to these two banks, the cost of making them whole should be covered by the sale of assets and the FDIC’s fund (if needed). My concern about investors/shareholders is that covering their losses might encourage more risky behavior in the industry. If you make an investment, you run the risk of that investment going bad, I’m not sure it should be the government’s job to cover you.

I believe most of SVB’s depositors were small businesses. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to cover their deposits so long as we are not bailing out the investors, shareholders, or management.

Also, the shareholders and investors are getting nothing. Only the depositors are getting anything.

Next to the Hamlin body double guy, he might be the most braindead poster on this site.

All of the major banks have DEI programs. This is just the brain worms crowd reflexively blaming anything bad on anything that they don’t like, regardless if there’s any actual connection. I used to work for one of the largest banks in the country. There were mandatory DEI trainings and voluntary DEI resource groups. One of the voluntary book clubs even read White Fragility. Why didn’t the banks plummet then? Why is it suddenly, years and years after those types of programs were implemented that it’s a problem? The answer is because the problems affecting SVB (being long on low yield government bonds in the face of rate hikes), Signature Bank (heavy investing in the crypto bubble), and smaller regional banks (bank run risks due to consumer concerns about SVB and Signature) have absolutely nothing to do with DEI. It’s fine to criticize DEI programs, but people pretending they had anything to do with this are just bragging about their own ignorance.

Agreed. Grass is always greener, I suppose. Outside of the Buffalo market, Edmunds is regarded as one of the top LBs in the game. I don’t know why he gets so much hate by fans. My guess is that we’ve had some poor DT play during much of his career so he was constantly dealing with OL in the second level. Not a coincidence then that once we get a great player like DaQuan Jones soaking up OL, Edmunds has his best year yet and secures the bag.

Yeah, in a short term crisis, you got to do what it takes to save the economy, even if it rewards the bad actors. But then when things have stabilized, it’s crucial to put in place mechanisms to prevent future crises and/or create tools that allow for resolution without rewarding bad actors. We’re generally good at the first part and bad at the second part. So we get (as you aptly described) privatized profits and socialized losses.