The lack of understanding here about how banks work is astounding. Are these the same people who feel it's their God given right to "move fast and break things"?
Disruption is great. Too bad for the music industry. Too bad for journalism. Too bad for legacy taxi services, etc. Disruption is great, except when it happens to you?
Aren't we all here in the business of managing risk? Or, after a decade of cheap money, has it just become all lip service?
"It's not my fault!" [1]
This recession is going to be brutal, but it's been a long time coming. Thank God money is going to start having value again.
Disruption in the definition of Clayton Christensen as you’re likely using doesn’t apply to the failing of banks. Disruption is a theory about innovation and entrepreneurship. SVB didn’t get disrupted by some new player who leapfrogged how banking works- they made poor choices for a world where interest rates went up.
Having been a bank for 40 years with a great reputation, no one who held their money there expected a meaningful risk the bank would collapse. The same with AIG and any other major bank collapse for a long time player. Sure let those responsible have repercussions, but innocent account holders of America’s future trillions of GDP, investment funds holding onto the money of pension accounts, farmers and wineries shouldn’t bear the brunt of investments gone sour leading to a liquidity crunch.
Note that 3 VCs taking out their cash quickly allowed the bottom to fall out.
Yeah not talking about bank "disruption" in the classic/rigid definition of the term.
I'm more commenting on how the the general attitude of the tech entrepreneur (willing to take risks, to swing and miss, move fast and break things) has been cross pollinated over to the finance (DeFi, VC tech funds, crypto affiliated banks) to largely disastrous (but not wholly unexpected) results.
What really bothers me is that these "financial geniuses" walk and talk (and in the case of SBF dress) like typical typical tech entrepreneurs, but when push comes to shove they are just the same old reckless wall street sociopaths trying to privatize profits and socialize the losses.
Your classic tech entrepreneur had skin in the game, was willing to swing and miss, learn from their mistakes, and get up and try again. In a forum that claims to be full of "real" true-scotsman tech entrepreneurs, there seem to be a lot of people here that think/talk like wall street sociopaths.
I feel like the last 5-10 years are full of more and more of these "jumped the shark" moments in the tech space (Theranos, WeWork etc). Innovation is dead. Low hanging fruit all picked. In it's place is a new priesthood, full of grifters who preach innovation while robbing us blind and getting bailed out.
To your point about "40 year stable banks", yeah it really sucks that normal people are caught up in this mess. But something tells me that what happened at this bank is unique to the tech/disruption space/narrative I mention above.
Personally I believe the contagion will be limited to poorly run banks making bad/reckless decisions. I guess the next few days/weeks we'll know for sure if this is a limited thing, or a widespread problem.
There is crossover in finance with crypto web3 blahblahblah. But I wouldn’t conflate the larger innovation in tech with that. It and VR/AR have gobbled a lot of attention, but meanwhile we’re on the edge of what will be a total transformation in the next 10-20 years with AI. I didn’t think we’d be here in 2023 but it’s quite clear the rate of innovation is now insane. That’s just one area - just about every industry has tech running through it now in a way that wasn’t the case 10 years ago. A lot of it is quite boring so you don’t see it in the news, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening or these companies are scam or worthless… far from it.
I don’t think SVB was subject to the SBF type person, or certainly it wasn’t the case their money was tied up in a blockchain. I don’t think it’s fair to call them grifters even if they fucked up by building a model for a pre inflation world.
I’m fine letting SBF et al go bust; it was pure speculation. But pension funds, hundreds of diverse startups, wineries and farmers don’t deserve to go down with one of the top 20 biggest banks. The domino effect is too massive.
Agreed, GPT etc. (I hate calling it AI) is going to be transformative and disruptive in the classic sense. And I too am surprised that we'd be here in 2023.
Agreed SVB wasn't subject to SBF type people. But I think that a lot of tech narratives/buzzwords get thrown around (Web 3.0, transformation, green economy, etc) when in actuality its just the same old sociopathic wall street behavior, dressed up in new jargon.
I've seen articles talking about how the SVB board knew something was up. Their risk committee met more than 18 times in 2022 (up from 7 in 2021). Yet they had no chief risk officer? [1]
And I agree, not fair when average people get caught up in this. Which is why I'm a fan of holding the people responsible accountable, so we can avoid a repeat of this in the future. Bailouts just encourage further bad behavior.
Disruption is great. Too bad for the music industry. Too bad for journalism. Too bad for legacy taxi services, etc. Disruption is great, except when it happens to you?
Aren't we all here in the business of managing risk? Or, after a decade of cheap money, has it just become all lip service?
"It's not my fault!" [1]
This recession is going to be brutal, but it's been a long time coming. Thank God money is going to start having value again.
[1] https://y.yarn.co/9c4c1fa3-fb64-4132-b44f-7cde70eafd0f_text....