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Understand you (dear OP) are angry about this, but agree with the above. You'll have to wait for assessment, justice or vengeance. The reward for your strategic

Understand you (dear OP) are angry about this, but agree with the above. You'll have to wait for assessment, justice or vengeance. The reward for your strategic waiting will be peace of mind.

wellthisisgreat 4y ago
oh I did make my peace with it, so here I am wondering from a more of an analytical standpoint. This level of incompetence ($85b very bad investment? not putting customer's assets safety first?) is criminal negligence. I assume in any other industry that deals with citizen's livelihoods, where managers would mess up on such a scale, the outcome would be very harsh? Or am I mistaken?
- mrandish 4y ago
  > Or am I mistaken? "incompetence", "criminal negligence"? It feels like you're ready to break out the torches and pitchforks to vanquish the evil-doers. Having spent a lengthy career in the tech business and having banked one of my startups at SVB several years back, I've learned the real world is far more complex and nuanced than the simple morality plays news headlines and social media prefer. There are surprisingly few pure black hat villains and white hat heroes. It's mostly just overlapping shades of gray and that makes for lousy stories because reality is complicated, boring and there isn't even anyone we're supposed to hate or cheer for. Based on the partial facts currently in evidence, I can imagine a wide variety of plausible scenarios in which SVB did nothing illegal. We just don't know. As I mentioned, the recent personal stock sale by the CEO isn't a great look but that's separate because it happened after the fact and didn't cause the bank to fail. Also, it's possible the sale was the result of a preset automatic selling plan and the CEO did nothing wrong regarding the sale other than encountering lucky timing. We'll see... I'm not a banker nor a lawyer but I've known lots of them over the years and have talked shop with them many times. Banks are supposed to take carefully measured risks. The nature of risks is that sometimes extreme outlier, black swan events can happen. The system is designed so that bank failures, while rare, are still possible. So far, the system appears to be working. The regulators are working right now to find a buyer for the bank. I wouldn't be surprised if a new owner is announced before Monday. Everyone (except the SVB shareholders) is going to get all their money. The SVB shareholders, like all public company shareholders, knew they were putting their money at risk to make more money.

Understand you (dear OP) are angry about this, but agree with the above. You'll have to wait for assessment, justice or vengeance. The reward for your strategic waiting will be peace of mind.

wellthisisgreat 4y ago

oh I did make my peace with it, so here I am wondering from a more of an analytical standpoint. This level of incompetence ($85b very bad investment? not putting customer's assets safety first?) is criminal negligence. I assume in any other industry that deals with citizen's livelihoods, where managers would mess up on such a scale, the outcome would be very harsh? Or am I mistaken?

mrandish 4y ago
> Or am I mistaken? "incompetence", "criminal negligence"? It feels like you're ready to break out the torches and pitchforks to vanquish the evil-doers. Having spent a lengthy career in the tech business and having banked one of my startups at SVB several years back, I've learned the real world is far more complex and nuanced than the simple morality plays news headlines and social media prefer. There are surprisingly few pure black hat villains and white hat heroes. It's mostly just overlapping shades of gray and that makes for lousy stories because reality is complicated, boring and there isn't even anyone we're supposed to hate or cheer for. Based on the partial facts currently in evidence, I can imagine a wide variety of plausible scenarios in which SVB did nothing illegal. We just don't know. As I mentioned, the recent personal stock sale by the CEO isn't a great look but that's separate because it happened after the fact and didn't cause the bank to fail. Also, it's possible the sale was the result of a preset automatic selling plan and the CEO did nothing wrong regarding the sale other than encountering lucky timing. We'll see... I'm not a banker nor a lawyer but I've known lots of them over the years and have talked shop with them many times. Banks are supposed to take carefully measured risks. The nature of risks is that sometimes extreme outlier, black swan events can happen. The system is designed so that bank failures, while rare, are still possible. So far, the system appears to be working. The regulators are working right now to find a buyer for the bank. I wouldn't be surprised if a new owner is announced before Monday. Everyone (except the SVB shareholders) is going to get all their money. The SVB shareholders, like all public company shareholders, knew they were putting their money at risk to make more money.