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If they were insolvent before the 42 billion was withdrawn, how did the people withdraw the 42 billion?


Insolvency means that they owed 220 billion, while owning 200 billion worth of assets.

SVB had enough cash-on-hand, and could borrow money against their assets in order to serve 42 billion dollars worth of withdrawals.

Their balance sheet still had a huge hole, from the moment that they marked-to-market their long-term treasuries. Which was before those 42 billion dollars were withdrawn.


I'm being very specific here, they had ~175b in deposits. There assets may or may not have been more or less than deposits, that is immaterial. They were insolvent because they did not have enough cash/credit/liquid capital to cover the predicted withdrawals. That is the why they are insolvent.

Long term, yes, the asset state would have been a problem, and would(should) have been marked up as a ~25% loss on the bonds that were being hammered by inflation.

but at no point would that have been a big issue for the stability of the bank. It would have hammered their share price, but not deposits. It probably would have required a change of management, but again, not fatal.

The issue here is that "asset insolvent" is rarely described like that, it normally at the point where you declare bankruptcy because no-one will buy you out because you liabilities are way more than your income.




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