pgwhalen

15 ms·

211.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
As much as it's a crutch in programming language design to say "we don't have to worry too much about the lack of ergonomics in this case, it would be such bad code if this edge case gets run into in the first place," th
212.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
Ethereum is the tech though, not the use case. It's the touch screen, not the "audience gasps when Steve Jobs scrolls to the bottom of the list of artists" moment.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
I'm curious why you draw the parallel - did crypto ever have a ChatGPT/iPhone moment? As an observant outsider, my impression is that every "moment" of note in crypto has been about some price going way up or way down -
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
> When is loyalty meaningfully rewarded? At the risk of being overly obvious, a company might do things like increase your compensation (especially backward looking discretionary comp), give you more opportunities suited to your interest
215.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
I’m curious how long ago you think Planet Money was good. I was never a regular listener, but I can remember 5 years ago being turned off by the relative lack of depth and time consuming humor. I always wrote it off as “not my style” or “fo
216.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
I understand it’s frustrating to be “the bad guy” in these threads, but thank you for putting in the effort to educate.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
Of course there is. Assuming you're referring to the new Bank Term Funding Program (which this article is not referring to), collateral is only eligible if it was owned before the program began. https://www.federalreserve
218.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
You are uninformed. The fed facility discussed in the post is the discount window, a century old program. The new facility is the Bank Term Funding Program. It won't be revealed how much this facility is used for a year.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
The point doesn’t stand, unless you ignore the difference between solvency and liquidity, which is a grave mistake when reasoning about banks.
220.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
Banking in the US is a public-private partnership and has been for over a hundred years. There are no secrets there, for anyone paying attention. I’m curious how you can say there’s no downside a week out of a large bank’s shareholders goin
221.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
I have no horse in this race, but fwiw, I can see how this mistake would be made honestly. Organization data could be easily refer to just the metadata of the organization, and depending on how the product is structured[1], could feel quit
222.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
I think you’re a bit confused. FedNow is not consumer facing, you need an account at the Fed to use it.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
This is nitpicking. While that paper is a good read and important to understand how banking works, the parent commenter's point about how money creation works, and how a narrow bank would not participate in it, is valid. Deposits _ar
224.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
> how do you interpret this part? what is an example of somebody who would be an unsecured debtholder? as in somebody with a stake in SVB the buisness? Bondholders, not just shareholders. The implication is that every security here is wi
225.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
Because there is incredible social utility in having the most basic form of money (bank deposits) actually retain its value without depositors having to think too hard about it.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
I don’t think you can make that argument. Buying longed dated bonds is done in the pursuit of profit. Nothing stopped SVB from buying shorted dated bills with less interest rate risk instead.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
Right. My point in saying "all banks would fail if there were a run on them" is just that if for some reason, every depositor at JP Morgan were to decide to withdraw their deposits on Monday in favor of some other bank, JP Morgan
228.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
> I've commented elsewhere that I'd be pissed at the moral hazard of unsecured depositors getting a federal bailout This is a very strange take that I disagree strongly with. There is no such moral hazard, and I would not call
229.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
> it wouldn’t hurt for there to be somewhere you actually can rest cash securely, for a service fee. This is called a Narrow Bank. [0] The Fed doesn't want it though, because such a bank would not participate in the money creation p
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
In what sense were banks bailed out in 2020, and it what sense are they being bailed out now?
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
> Why would there be an expectation of more of this to come? As a general approximation, all banks would fail if there were a run on them. It's merely a question of how much of a run would be needed. If the panic among VCs that
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
This is a great way to put it, and I don’t see this reality acknowledged on HN very often.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
It turns out that there was very little defaulting in 2008, the problem was the fear of default which resulted in changing valuations that were not broadly expected. In this case, there is no doubt about the value of SVB’s assets: they’re
234.
by pgwhalen 4y ago
Right, risk management is often about taking a huge loss, so that it doesn’t become an existential one. Clearly risk management was poor here. I only took exception to the idea that they “tried to unwind the position,” which is clearly untr
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
In my opinion, it’s the best movie ever about finance, and it’s not even close.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
Can you elaborate? Nothing about this situation is at all related to insider trading.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
I’ve struggled for a long time to explain to others what money is, but “money always has a counter party” is a great way to start, thanks.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
This is an interesting story but I'm not sure it adds up. What does it mean that they "tried to unwind the position"? It doesn't really make sense that you could fail to unwind a position in some of the most liquid mar
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
Is their any evidence their books are fraudulent? I’m curious why you bring that up.
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by pgwhalen 4y ago
This is incorrect, as we learned from Silvergate. Customers pulled their deposits for reasons unrelated to the bank (in Silvergate’s case, the customers of the crypto exchanges wanted all their money back, so the crypto exchanges had to wit

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