> the point of the FDIC system is for customers not to have to do this kind of risk assessment themselves
It seemed self-evident to me, based on the explicitly stated limit on FDIC insurance, that if you had an amount of money over that limit, you really need to have a plan to deal with that risk, and people who failed to do so should suffer the consequences of their poor decisions. As things stand, the people who did spend the time and/or money to provision for that risk have suffered for it.
I think what many people are having a hard time with (myself as well, sort of...) is how the rules were changed out from under everyone in yet another example of how the rules don't apply to the politically connected.
As I understand it, the ordinary way FDIC resolves a situation like this is that they simply have the failing bank acquired by a peer bank (a bank of generally the same size and structure), which then takes over the depositor obligations. So it's not as if the ordinary course is that uninsured deposits get zeroed out; it's just that the mechanism FDIC is using is novel and abrupt.
>> they simply have the failing bank acquired by a peer bank
"Simply".
WaMu - acquired, depositors got 100 cents on the dollar
IndyMac - 50 cents on the dollar
Silver State - 11 cents on the dollar
Depositors have not always been made whole in the past. Calvinball has certainly been played in the past, for IndyMac the FDIC limit was retroactively raised from 100K to 250K.
That's what people are pissed about. The Calvinball rules.
And we know how that works out, if you're in the in group, you get paid, and if you're not in the in group, you get fucked.
As Black Flag once sang, "We're tired of being screwed. Revenge!"
I don't know either. I've been wondering if it's largely because SVB is a weird bank. They were huge --- larger than American Express --- but with an unusually small and extraordinarily correlated based of depositors. I think it's hard to understate just how strange SVB's customer base was; the closest analogy I can come up with is the Last of Us zombies, all perfectly connected with fungus hyphae.
The situation unfolded over a weekend, after SVB shut down Friday afternoon. The FDIC attempted to find a buyer on Saturday, and got at least one interested party, but couldn't close a deal. The Administration was getting anxious over the possible fallout: tech companies not meeting payroll, possible banking contagion, who knows what else? Then Powell/Fed proposed some novel mechanisms for temporary rescue. [1]
They worked together to put out a joint press release, and Biden gave a down-to-earth, rough-and-tumble speech about protecting depositors and kicking the failed executives and bad-luck shareholders to the curb, because this is "how capitalism works". It was an unusually blunt attempt to preemptively push back at the perception that this guarantee of FDIC-uninsured deposits will be branded a 'bailout'. (I predict that this attempt will fail and this will widely be perceived as a 'bailout' in casual and political discourse, which is the exact forum at which they've aimed this message.)
After 2008, the public gained awareness of the consolidation -- both forced and emergent -- that occurs in response to these sorts of crises. Public opinion views these outcomes unfavorably, because they seem unfair and irreversible, albeit no palatable alternatives have emerged that are acceptable to both to the public and government and industry incumbents.
Buyers of banks in the last round got screwed. Dimon has been vocal about this. They inherit a string of liabilities that take a decade (or more) to resolve. Add to that, the number of private equity buyers for a $200bn bank is limited.
Maybe as a whole, but Cobra Kai was excellent and very popular!
Also, in the long-run, will having "missed" streaming & shorts necessarily be a bad thing? Time will tell.
I wish they never introduced shorts. Why do all platforms need to be everything to everyone? Why can't they focus on just being the best platform for user-created long-form video? I probably know the answer, but it makes me sad that that's the reality we live in.
Cobra Kai was a huge flop for youtube (missed opportunity?), because they had to sell it off, couldn't keep it going, and to be honest, I'm not sure it would've been great had it stayed there, I enjoyed the first 2 seasons, but Netflix has just gotten better and better, and you can tell from the last youtube season to the first Netflix season how the quality shifted.
> I wish the author had elaborated on why it should be illegal. (Or maybe, how it is?)
Its implicit - an actor is taking over entire societal logistics and ecommerce while burning investor money with no obligation to make profit, hence be sustainable. (applies to many tech giants). Practically becoming a public utility that the society depends on for running itself day to day.
If that actor goes tits up, then the entire society will experience chaos due to that supposedly private, but actually public infrastructure crumbling down with nothing at that scale to back it up.
Its too risky and irresponsible. You can bet that they will force the government to bail it out if that happens, by saying that it is 'too big to fail'. Socialized costs. Privatized profits.
Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses, but they were removed by the Roman Catholic Church because they determined it violated their community guidelines.
Don't kids in Singapore and Taiwan only wear masks when they're sick? (Rather than the entire class at all times; at least, up until the start of the pandemic.) If so, it seems like a mistake to use that as any precedent for how kids in California will grow up under the present regime.
The only advice I have to offer (which may be terrible advice!) is to keep a big chunk of your investment portfolio in cash (10-25%.) If you maintain your target weights in how you allocate your contributions and also by rebalancing a couple of times per year, you'll effectively be automatically buying low & selling high.
Over long time scales, it really doesn't matter if the market is just about to crash. Time in the market will always beat timing the market, given that no one can know market tops and bottoms.
That being said, if you have a short term savings goal, are just about to retire, or simply dont sleep well worrying about losses - cash isnt the worst way to allocate some of your assets. Its not for me, but to each their own.
Inflation means holding cash actually devalues it. Assets are better protection mechanisms. Real estate, precious metals, crypto maybe, fine art, etc .
> When I came back to visit for a project later on, someone told me about a new thing called HTML, which was, as he described it, a derivative of SGML. Markup language enthusiasts were an occupational hazard at Interleaf and I ignored him, but this HTML thing later became a big part of my life.
It seemed self-evident to me, based on the explicitly stated limit on FDIC insurance, that if you had an amount of money over that limit, you really need to have a plan to deal with that risk, and people who failed to do so should suffer the consequences of their poor decisions. As things stand, the people who did spend the time and/or money to provision for that risk have suffered for it.
I think what many people are having a hard time with (myself as well, sort of...) is how the rules were changed out from under everyone in yet another example of how the rules don't apply to the politically connected.