They should have let it fail. A policy of insuring 100% of deposits is simply incompatible with the idea that private banks make loans. If all deposits are insured that effectively means that banks will be loaning the governments money instead which will either result in 1. The government deciding how and who to issue credit to or 2. Theft from the public.
They are all ready trying to walk this back (listen to Janet Yellen at 1 hour 30 minutes): https://youtube.com/watch?v=WVTmS4mM5zk&t=5718s
It’s going to get ugly when they do inevitably have to let some depositors take a loss, as they will basically be admitting that svb only got a bailout because the depositors are politically well connected.
Frankly I’ve also been kind of surprised with attitudes on the motte about this issue. I can only assume that most of the posters here are adjacent enough to venture capital and broader sv ecosystem to be benefiting from this too such a degree that the usual
Libertarian ideals expressed here can be ignored on this issue.
dukeleto
1yr ago
This is the key detail I was looking for and it makes me a lot less sympathetic to the depositors now demanding a bail out.
Do you know why they all flocked to this particular bank in the first place? I can only assume that they we’re getting more favorable terms than they would receive at Wells Fargo or somewhere else.
Edit: nvm someone else answered this elsewhere
dukeleto
1yr ago
That’s true, I have never worked at a start up and am basing my opinion off of some wasteful enterprises I have heard about second hand. Although I would ask at what level you think svbs depositors should be bailed out at above 250k if any?
dukeleto
1yr ago
I think it must depend a lot what you are doing now. I dropped out of a PhD in a science discipline to take an industry job and actually regularly use a lot of the knowledge I obtained in grad school (of course I’m also very good at teaching myself stuff and would have been forced to learn this material on my own)
dukeleto
1yr ago
I’m of the opinion that the overwhelming majority of tech startups are overvalued and only existed as a result of absurdly low interest rates that no longer exist. Many of them would have failed eventually as a result of their inability to raise money and if this pushes some of them out sooner that’s a good thing.
More fundamentally I hope that this pushes some of the intellectual capital currently wasted on basically pointless ventures into more productive parts of the economy.
China did this explicitly a couple of years ago by straight up banning tech startups and I believe it was good policy (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-tech-giants-policy). I’m glad that interest normalization is having the same effect.
dukeleto
1yr ago
My father was a serious alcoholic (like had a hard time holding a job down and our family lost a house) kind of drinker. This experience has given me a very negative view of the drug relative to some of its alternatives. For instance, there were two relatively pleasant years during my teens when he mostly stopped drinking and actually acted like a typical dad. During this time he taught me how to ski, helped me with my homework (which was something that had literally never happened during the rest of my childhood) and did other typical dad things.
Eventually he landed himself in rehab and we later discovered that he had been addicted to (or at least using regularly) hydrocodone for most of that time period. I still don’t really know what had happened (I think his doctor may have just cut him off, this was around the time they tightened up prescriptions or perhaps he just didn’t manage his tolerance effectively, it’s my understanding that it’s basically impossible to use opiates regularly without developing physical dependence issues). I still really don’t know how about the fact that my two most pleasant teenage years coincided with a time when my father was substituting opioids for ethanol.
I have spent a lot of time wondering about how he rationalized it to himself. He is actually incredibly sharp and was once quite handsome.
I also wonder about myself. I have tried getting drunk a couple of times and I really didn’t enjoy it. I only ever drink when I feel the social setting requires it and then usually as little as possible.
Basically the only drugs I have ever liked are stimulants and running (and especially running on stimulants). I have had adhd (diagnosed as a child) but I really don’t know if I believe that the pathology is a real thing. I would unquestionably be less successful on almost every meteric if I couldn’t legally take vyvanse. I tried being unmedicated my first two years of college which were a total train wreck. I had a high level of self loathing and insecurity mostly related to my relatively low levels of academic performance and lack of friends.
I eventually went back on stimulants, my grades improved substantially, I made more friends and got a masters degree. now have a high paying job which I love and my life is better than I ever believed it could be. And at times like this I ask myself if the stimulants helped (and continue to help) because they make it easier to focus on things other than my various emotional traumas (essentially making it easier to live in the present). If I had had a more functional family would I even need to be on them? Or is, it the case that some people are just genetically predisposed to be addicted to something. If I hadn’t been given prescription stimulants would I have become addicted to something else instead. Or put another way, if my dad had been given Ritalin as a child would he be more like me today? Do you fix an addict by finding the correct drug?
dukeleto
1yr ago
As I understand it the main legal issue is that congress didn’t appropriate the money to forgive the loans. Student loans where supposed to be a source of revenue (for example this is partially how Obama care was supposed to be financed https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-giant-student-loan-con-1480640259 note that this is from 2016) so it seems to be a bit of a stretch that a different older law (the hero’s act) would allow the excecutive to simply take all of this money and spend it on something else.
I’ve listened to a few episodes of his podcast and it’s often fairly unhinged political ranting. I think that Scott Adams is clearly pretty intelligent, but it’s also obvious that he is (and has) been angling for some kind or right wing commentator gig for a long time. Since getting cancelled is basically a career requirement for that I think it’s obvious what is happening.
I don’t know enough about Statins to have a real opinion on it, but do you use fish oil? It reliably lowers triglycerides and seems to have a beneficial effect on cholesterol (it tends to raise hdl a lot more than ldl so even if you’re ldl rises the hdl to ldl ratios are improved https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-fish-oil/art-20364810).
Also if you decide you just want it any way it’s really easy to get something like lipitoir prescribed, I have used this https://plushcare.com/lipitor-atorvastatin-prescription/ for ozempic so I don’t think you would have any trouble with a statin.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I’d be interested in who you follow on China (I agree Zeihan is a clown on China).
dukeleto
1yr ago
I have never taken Zeihan that seriously, but will conceded that with respect to Russia I think his record is actually pretty good. I mean his book explicitly stated that he thought Russia would invade sometime during the 2020’s and they did, seemingly for the reasons he thought they would (I.e Russias bad demographics and obtaining a more defensible border with Europe).
dukeleto
1yr ago
It is at least very certain that bombs where placed on the pipelines since the explosions where recorded on seismic instruments https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/09/27/seismologists-suspect-explosions-damaged-undersea-pipelines-carry-russian-gas
dukeleto
1yr ago
Dang that is expensive (even the international edition is like 60$!). I’ll start with Ash!
I was wondering if anyone can recommend a good abstract algebra book? It’s something I have been wanting to learn a bit of. I am a geophysicist so I have pretty strong linear algebra, calculus and general numerical
Methods background, but have never taken set theory or real/imaginary analysis.
dukeleto
1yr ago
Something I never understood is why Russia hasn’t taken any nuclear action. Last year there seemed to be very serious concerns that Russia would do something nuclear and now they don’t even seem to threatening nearly as much or as loudly. What happened? I was strongly expecting them to preform a nuclear test or some other demonstration, I’m delighted that they didn’t, but find it hugely suspicious that this issue just seemed to evaporate over night.
dukeleto
1yr ago
Or the numerous times this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_(intruder) broke into buckingham palace. Most people don’t maximize physical security because our social contract doesn’t require it.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I agree, I think a lot of people are pretty desperate to reframe this to somehow make Paul look bad because they don’t like him. He is clearly the victim here and Musk and everyone else who was pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories about this attack should simply move on to other topics.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I enjoy the old atomic weapons test films, many of them where well produced and quite cinematic:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EeyEXkVAifM Plowshare device designed for canal digging
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ge865CR9pN8 Castle bravo
dukeleto
1yr ago
I don’t think that jk Rowling is arguing that trans people should be denied treatment but asserting that everyone else isn’t required to acknowledge the trans person’s chosen gender. This isn’t the same thing
dukeleto
1yr ago
It’s interesting because the main constraint on insect size is oxygen concentration. During the Carboniferous, when the oxygen concentration was nearly 35%, bugs were huge! https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/carboniferous-giant-insects/
dukeleto
1yr ago
I have never lived in Seattle (just visited and not since 2019), and it aways struck me as one of the more functional American cities. Also wondering how much different Bellvue is politically?
dukeleto
1yr ago
That’s fair, I accidentally replied to the wrong person below and didn’t realize that local meant Seattle.
So I didn’t realize that for you local government meant Seattle, which might be too big for you to have any meaningful influence. Although I will note that in general, every municipality has a mix of competent and incompetent politicians. At this level they really aren’t functionaries to nearly the same degree that any other politician you will encounter at the state or national level and having slightly better/less corrupt/smarter leadership really can improve quality of life for lots of people.
I think it’s also sort of ridiculous to assume that the city is competently run, you wouldn’t have any way of knowing unless you had worked for the city or had some political involvement. Corruption in municipal governments is absurdly common and only the most outrageous cases (such as this https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-payscandal-arrests/mayor-officials-arrested-in-california-pay-scandal-idUSTRE68K40N20100922 ) ever result in prosecutions. This is historically how the us has worked (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall as the most famous example in the us)
Finally I said you should get involved. This involves donating money but volunteering is probably more important. The benefit of a donation is that it will make you specifically known to the politician you are supporting.
China essentially applies a blanket ban on US tech companies attempting to enter their market. Issues of privacy and national security aside, I have always felt that this is hugely unfair. While I wouldn’t support building up internet censorship capabilities to block Chinese websites I feel that ordering advertisers and tech companies to ban an app adds some much needed symmetry.
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