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Because I didn't write blog posts over the weekend, today I'll look at the most popular threads over the past three days. The most active thread during that time was titled, "SVB failure" and posted in the "Money and Finances" forum. As anyone with even marginal awareness of current events can guess, this thread is about the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank. The story, as I understand it, is that this bank is popular with venture capitalists who invest in tech startup businesses. These investors require the companies in which they invest to keep their funds in SVB. Apparently during the closed economy of the pandemic, SVB accumulated money that could not otherwise be invested. SVB used that money to purchase bonds and securities which, due to the low interest rates at the time, had low yields. With the rise in interest rates, SVB faced the predicament of either selling the bonds at a loss or sitting on them until maturity, creating a liquidity crisis. According to a Twitter thread by on of the venture capitalist involved, a chat group involving 250 some investors discussed this problem, leading to several of the investors advising their companies to withdrawal their funds from SVB. This provoked a bank run which resulted in the FDIC taking over the bank. Lead-ing venture capitalists took to Twitter to demand that the government protect their deposits. and many companies who lost access to their funds worried about how to pay their bills. I haven't read the entire 27-page thread, but from what I have read, the discussion mirrors much of the general discourse on this topic. Some posters see the sky as falling and stress the dangers of SVB's collapse. Others take a "let it fail" approach and express fatigue with government bailouts. Eventually, discussion turned toward possible solutions and then analysis of the government's statement that it will safeguard deposits through measures that will not require taxpayer funds. Not every poster is necessarily onboard with this solution, but there seems to be a general understanding that the government would be forced to do something.