SVB Bets on Bonds, Bank Run Fun, Worries of Moral Hazard & Mike Pence’s Cowardly Moment of Bravery

In this episode, Alex starts by discussing how Mike Pence finally did the bare minimum over the weekend. At an elite media dinner, Pence finally condemned what happened on January 6th, said history would hold Trump accountable, and seemed to critisize Tucker Carlson for trying to whitewash 1/6. Alex laughs at Pence’s late and cowardly stance. For the rest of the episode, Alex talks about the collapse of three banks over the last week. These banks were Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate (an institution heavily exposed to cryptocurrency), and Signature Bank in New York. While reports show that 89% of $200 billion of deposits at SVB were not insured (the FDIC only insures up to $250,000), the Fed and the Biden administration promised that all depositers would have access to their funds by this week. Alex discusses his concerns about this precedent. While this was not technically a bailout, and there are reasonable arguments about why these tech start-ups needed access to their money, Alex things banks like SVB were under-regulated and allowed to act carelessly. He goes into moral hazard, loostening of the Dodd Frank Act, and why interest rate hikes could have made this issue worse.