Now, what the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. And what that really means, and they won't say it, and I'll come back to that, what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system, the entire deposit base. Why? Because you can't guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say at First Republic, sorry, yours aren't guaranteed. Of course, they are.
Normally I'd say that nationalization was a very bad sign because it would mean a transition from businesslike practices to having commissars who force unprofitable political nonsense on the bank. However, in this case, it sounds like the bank had gotten to commissars all on its own.
Ouch. It has been on the horizon for years. Now it's here.
ReplyDeleteHattip Glenn Reynolds:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/03/15/former_treasury_official_bailout_is_in_the_eye_of_the_beholder_but_biden_is_effectively_nationalizing_the_banks.html
Now, what the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. And what that really means, and they won't say it, and I'll come back to that, what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system, the entire deposit base. Why? Because you can't guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say at First Republic, sorry, yours aren't guaranteed. Of course, they are.
Normally I'd say that nationalization was a very bad sign because it would mean a transition from businesslike practices to having commissars who force unprofitable political nonsense on the bank. However, in this case, it sounds like the bank had gotten to commissars all on its own.
ReplyDelete