The Most Active Threads since Friday

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.

The second most active thread was posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum and titled, "Unrealistic things in movies and tv shows that drive you crazy". The original poster's biggest pet peeve about unrealistic movie elements is when two characters from the same foreign country speak to each other in heavily-accented English rather than their native tongue. This reminds me that as a very young child, I was convinced that I was learning German by watching Hogan's Hero's and speaking English with a German accent. At 19 pages in length, the thread is full of examples. One poster nominated the entire "Emily in Paris" series. I've been watching the show and agree that it provides enough unrealistic examples to fill a thread itself. Of course, DCUM wouldn't be DCUM if nobody found anything about which to argue and this thread is par for the course. Some posters disagreed with what some posters find unbelievable and offered explanations as to why the examples are actually realistic. Subtitles are a particularly polarizing element about which posters seem to have very strong feelings. Ultimately, just like today's entertainment industry itself, everything ends up being about zombies. In this case, a poster objects to the idea that zombies can run fast. Implied in this criticism is that zombies themselves are believable as long as they move slowly. Posters also repeatedly brought up the female beauty standards that are observed in movies and television shows. Women who accurately would be toothless are shown with perfect teeth (this is also true of men, to be fair) and even in the most challenging circumstances are shown with "shaved legs and feminine glossy lips, long lashes and freshly shampooed hair."

The third most active thread was titled, "2023 Oscar fashion thread!" and posted in the "Beauty and Fashion" forum. Consisting of page after page of pictures of women in dresses, this thread is far outside the scope of my personal interests. As such, I am not prepared to slog through its 21 pages. Threads about fashion at the Oscars are an annual tradition on DCUM however and some posters seem to take the whole thing very seriously. The few posts I bothered to read critiqued the fashion in a serious manner. Frankly, I would have preferred a less serious, snark-filled approach. But, then again, I am not the target audience for the thread. I don't know if it was covered or not, but the only outfit in which I am really intersted is that huge white veil that one woman was wearing. I'd hate to have been seated behind her. Choosing to wear such a thing is such an obvious attention grab that I think it deserves a smackdown from some of DCUM's sharp-tongued fashion critics. She is probably a believer in the idea that no publicity is bad publicity, but in this case, bad publicity would be fun.

Finally, for the last thread, we will end almost where we began with a thread about the Silicon Valley Bank. This one, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, was titled, "SVB Bank Run: Fed Calling Emergency Meeting". The original poster linked to an article announcing a meeting to be held today by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Some posters pointed out that this thread duplicated the topic addressed by the first thread in today's post. However, I thought that this topic had both financial and political dimensions and, as such, was suitable for both forums. As expected, this thread focused heavily on allocating political blame. Some posters pointed out that Trump had weakened banking regulations that would have previously covered SVB. Others said this was a result of Biden's economy. I have not read either this thread or the other one posted in the "Money and Finances" forum very carefully, so please correct me if I am wrong, but my impression from skimming both threads is that this thread actually goes further into the nitty gritty of the finances that led to this crisis and what measures might resolve it. It would be unusual, to say the least, for a thread in the Political Forum to be more substantive than one in the finances forum. But, just to show that the Political forum is not going down without a fight when it comes to banality, one poster managed to work Meghan Markle into the conversation (mispelling her name in the process). Nevertheless, this appears to be a highly-substantive thread that is probably worth a read by anyone interested in the topic.