All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E119: Silicon Valley Bank implodes: startup extinction event, contagion risk, culpability, and more
Episode Date: March 11, 2023(0:00) Bestie intro! (1:57) Overview of the SVB collapse and bank run (17:53) Who or what is to blame? Debating venture debt (37:11) Contagion risk, second- and third-order effects, government backsto...ps (1:00:36) What does this mean for the VC industry? Silicon Valley panic cycle, advice for founders Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg https://twitter.com/altcap Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2023/pr23016.html https://s201.q4cdn.com/589201576/files/doc_downloads/2023/03/r/Q1-2023-Investor-Letter.FINAL-030823.pdf https://s201.q4cdn.com/589201576/files/doc_downloads/2023/03/Q1-2023-Mid-Quarter-Update-vFINAL3-030823.pdf https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1634260576431136768 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4565388-svb-financial-blow-up-risk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymo6Yzjv_KY https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/treasury-closely-watching-siliconvalley-bank-share-plunge https://www.cbsnews.com/news/janet-yellen-ukraine-treasury-secretary-kyiv-visit-volodymyr-zelenskyy https://twitter.com/Rippling/status/1634201986894577665 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program https://www.wsj.com/articles/bond-losses-push-silicon-valley-bank-parent-to-raise-capital-125e89d4 https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf?emrc=bedc09 https://www.google.com/finance/quote/IAT:NYSEARCA
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All right, everybody.
It's an emergency podcast.
Silicon Valley bank has been taken over by the FDIC.
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Hit the like and subscribe button below. Hit the like and subscribe button below. Hit the like and subscribe button below. Hit the like and subscribe button below. Hit the like and subscribe button below. Hit the like and subscribe button below. huge day today in Silicon Valley. We haven't seen a black swan like event happen here
in a long time since 2008.
I thought the last time was when you published
the book Angel.
Oh God.
I, I, I, I, I, I, I have to get to work.
Tramoth, I saved the jokes.
I'm trying to give you a cold open.
We did that.
Okay, we got three, two,
one, two,
you're like your winner's ride.
Great man David Sack. Okay, everybody. It's been a while 36 hours here. We're going to get into Silicon Valley
bank imploding. The FDIC has shut down Silicon Valley bank.
And there's many different things we have to discuss.
With me today, as always, the dictator himself,
Chema Paliha Patia, the rain man David Sacks
and the prince of panic attacks no more,
his wire's cleared, David Freiberg,
the Sultan of science, welcome boys.
How is everybody just to start this off?
Contextually, the last 24 hours, can you recall a time in our careers where it's felt this acute or insane or intense?
2008 and COVID.
Okay, and I think that this is right up there.
Could be two, probably three, in terms of the level of panic and concern.
The problem is we're in the middle of it.
We don't know what's gonna happen this weekend.
So there's a lot of anxiety right now,
a lot of panic going on.
And a lot of unlike COVID and O8,
really acute effects that many companies and investors
are actively dealing with right now,
like not just a few thousands of companies
that are really in a state of like
distress right now. So it is potentially from a Silicon Valley perspective worse than O8 or
COVID. Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean, this is basically a Lehman sized event for Silicon Valley.
Remember when Lehman brothers went out of the basically a fall for bankruptcy in 2008 started
the whole financial crisis. The federal authorities thought that the best plan for Lehman was to follow-up bankruptcy,
they didn't try to save it.
And that basically led to a cascade where the whole financial system almost collapsed.
I think that SVB, this is a Lehman-sized event for Silicon Valley.
There's two big things happening.
One is the impact on the startup ecosystem. So you're seeing probably
thousands of companies now cannot make payroll in the next few weeks because their money is
trapped and tied up at Silicon Valley Bank, which is now under receivership. So if you
wired your money out yesterday, you're good. And a lot of people managed to do that, but
there are a lot of people who were headwires
in the hopper didn't make it.
Today, logged into the website, can't log in, the money's just frozen.
And we don't know when they're going to be able to get their money out or how many
cents of the dollar you're going to get.
So basically, the whole startup ecosystem is in peril.
I think Gary Tann called it an extension level event.
Yes, exactly. That was a good term. And just to be really clear, this is not big tech
at risk. I know there's a lot of people out there who don't like the idea of bailing
out big tech. This is not Google. It's not Amazon.
Exactly. Those companies that are playing a cast, they're fine. This is small companies.
Companies with 10 to 100 employees. And you're looking at maybe thousands of them just
being wiped out for no reason
they didn't do anything wrong because of this.
This could have a very damaging effect on the startup economy and the whole United States
economy.
This is little tech.
These are the future companies that will keep the United States competitive versus China
and the rest of the world.
The other big thing that's happening, this all happening real time,
is a regional banking crisis.
Because when depositors see that their money was not safe
at SVB, which was a top 20 bank,
that as far as everyone knows was in regulatory compliance.
Nobody has said that SVB wasn't compliant.
As far as we know, they had a regulator seal of approval.
And now you find out your money was not safe and it's not FDIC in short above $250,000. So the conversations we're all seeing in our chat groups with leading investors is why the
hell would you keep your money anywhere but JP Morgan or a top four bank. And so I think that unless the Fed steps in here over the weekend,
we're going to see potentially a run on the regional banking system, a cascade like we saw in 2008.
Well, facts, let's just take a step back before because I think you're right, but we should talk
about why that happens, the contagion drivers. And just so people know, Silicon Valley Bank is used by 50% of venture backed startups.
And I would say the majority of venture firms
also have their money there.
So this morning I got a note from a fund I'm an LPN.
They have millions of dollars that they can access
to invest in startups.
So Chimoff, there are many products and services
that Silicon Valley provides.
One is banking services to startups.
Another is to venture capitalists.
They do the mortgages for venture capitalists and for founders as well.
They provide those kind of like love services, but you also mention in our group chat, they
also provide loans to GPs, general partners to people who run venture firms.
So the impact could also hit there.
Maybe you could explain what that is.
And then we'll get into what happened here.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's important, maybe actually just for freeberg to just explain what's happening.
But okay.
And maybe let me just do the lead in and then freeberg can do the details.
But for those that are far away and aren't even sure what's going on, the basic
problem that we have right now is in the last 36 hours, a key part of the financial plumbing
of Silicon Valley has basically been turned off. And as a result, billions of dollars
of deposits have basically been frozen. It means that people can't pay their bills. It
means that people can't access their deposits. It means that people can't access their
deposits. It means that credit lines could be in default. It means that payroll can't be met.
And so as a result, we have this potential contagion on our hands. But in order to understand it on
an packet, I think it's important to explain exactly how this came to pass. So let me just hand
the ball to Freeberg and then we can talk about some of the implications
of which there are many.
Yeah, before Freeberg starts with the Y,
just the what that's happened as well.
This all started on Wednesday evening
when Silicon Valley banks CEO
published a letter to shareholders announcing
that the bank was rebalancing its balance sheet
by selling tens of billions of dollars
worth of mostly US securities, I'm sorry, treasuries.
And then they announced they would raise some money
and sell some shares in Silicon Valley bank.
The then the shares in Silicon Valley bank
is a publicly traded entity,
dropped 60% on Thursday, then another 60% on Friday.
Of course, then the entire world got focused on this.
And then every venture capitalist started telling,
or I would say the overwhelming majority
of venture capitalists told their
Founders to get their money out of SVB then you had a classic run on the bank a small number of venture capitalists gave advice to say Hey, we should support Silicon Valley bank. I understand that but it turned out to be really bad advice and then
Trading was halted on Friday morning pending news and then finally the FDIC shut down
Silicon Valley Bank at noon
on Friday and there's a lot of speculation of what will happen over the weekend, but
maybe you could walk us through technically what happened to Silicon Valley Bank and why
they had this cash shortfall and this, you know, we explained the run of the bank basically,
but what led up to this?
The irony is it really was and is prior to the quote run a financially solvent business.
So I have a few slides. If you're on YouTube, you can see it that we pulled one slide that was
kind of made by us and the other set that come from Silicon Valley Bank's actual presentations.
But if you look at their balance sheet, this is from the end of the year 2022.
You can kind of look at the stuff that they owe. They're liabilities, which is what they owe their customers that sits in deposits.
Because when customers give you cash in a deposit, you owe them that money back.
So that sits as a liability.
And then they had some other debt.
So in total, Silicon Valley Bank at the end of the year had about $195 billion in liabilities,
$173 billion of customer deposits that they, the customers and 22 billion of other debt.
And then they take those customer deposits
and they invest it in a number of securities.
And the way that a balance sheet business
like this bank would operate is,
the customers have access to their cash any time they want.
But in order for the bank to make money,
they make longer duration investments.
And those longer duration investments
give them the ability to earn money on those longer duration investments more than they're paying the customers
for the deposit. So if you look at their longer duration investments, they had about $208 billion
of total assets sitting on the balance sheet. So compare that to the $195 billion that they owe customers and other debt holders.
So, you know, the difference here,
between $208 and $195 is about $13 billion.
That's kind of the net
what people would call book value
of Silicon Valley bank at the end of the year.
And of the $208 billion of assets that they had,
74 billion were loans,
and they've got to break down
in a loan portfolio here in a minute.
91 billion were these whole to maturity securities
where they don't actually adjust the value
of these on a quarterly basis.
And 26 billion is what triggered this panic,
which is available for sale securities, mostly treasuries.
And what happened is Silicon Valley banks deposits
came in so quickly over the last couple of years
that they went out and they bought a bunch of treasuries
with the cash that they got. And the problem is that very quickly... Freeberg, it's actually N out and they bought a bunch of treasuries, you know, with the cash that they got. And the problem is that very
quickly, freeberg gets actually NBS, they bought a bunch of NBS, tenure-duration
abuse. And important to note, of the 208 billion that they have the book value
freeberg, there was a, whatever, 10% of its in cash or something. So they do have
some cash there. That's right. Yes, sorry, it's a good point. If you go back. So
like, you know, let's say that of the hundred of the hundred and seventy three billion of customer deposits,
you know, they've got 14 billion of cash, and then they've got all these treasury securities
they can sell, call it 40 billion. So if 25% of customers said tomorrow, hey, we want
our cash back, theoretically, they could just dump those treasury securities, distribute
the cash and give it all back to customers. The problem is, if suddenly more than 25% want to get their cash back, well, now they have
a problem.
And that is effectively what triggers the run on the bank.
As soon as some folks think that others might be pulling money out, then everyone rushes
to be the first money out the door.
And that's what triggers a classic run on the bank.
There is a statistic, I think, in the 1920s, there were several hundred banks that had runs every year for almost the entire decade. And this was like a regular
kind of occurrence that happened in the 1920s that are shared in a lot of our modern
securities laws that are meant to kind of create the necessary liquidity provisions in how
these banks are able to operate to make cash available to customers. But what happened
is so much so by the way, freeberg that they made a movie. It's a wonderful life about the bank run. So basically one of the
bigger problems that Silicon Valley bank, they ran into two big problems. Number one is deposit
decline where VCs were not investing new money and when they were not investing new money and startups
were burning more money than Silicon Valley had modeled they would be burning because they thought everyone's
going to reduce spend and reduce burn and they didn't.
So deposits were going down while all these startups were burning money.
No VCs were investing.
So total deposits were on the decline.
Meanwhile, they're bond portfolio, the assets that they hold on the balance sheet,
also declined in value.
And I kind of just put a really simple illustration here on why. If you have a hundred dollar kind of face value bond that earns 2%
which is basically where these treasuries were a year ago and you hold that for 10 years, that 10-year bond yields 122 dollars.
If the interest rate goes up to 5%, then that bond should yield $163. So the value of the first bond actually goes down by 25% because of the market conditions.
That's how significant the value changes with just a 3% change in the interest rates.
And that's effectively what happened with that available for security segment.
Of the Silicon Valley bank portfolio balance sheet.
They had this bond portfolio that suddenly got devalued and they had declining
deposits. So when deposits start to decline, you got to make sure you have enough assets
sitting on the balance sheet. So they sold a bunch of them, said we're going to raise
more money. And at that point, everyone kind of perked their head up and said, oh my gosh,
what's crazy is in Q4, by the way, seeking alpha, this website, you guys know, they had
actually done an analysis and said, as SVB about to blow up.
And they put together a bunch of slides that highlighted why this might be the case,
because they saw that deposits were declining, that their assets that they hold
were basically declining in value because of the massive and very quick rise in interest rates,
and that SVB had bought a bunch of bonds that were long, long-durated bonds.
So it led to, you know, obviously a real short-term problem.
If you look at the
rest of SVB's loan portfolio, there's also a question of how distressed that all is. So 10% of
their $70 billion plus dollars of loans is in venture debt. And venture debt is very questionable
in this market, right? Because historically, the way venture debt makes money is that they assume
that VCs are going to keep funding the companies that they're providing debt to.
And if the VCs stop funding the companies, then the venture debt defaults.
And so if you go to the last slide in this deck, you'll kind of see SVB's performance
on their venture debt portfolio.
Yeah, so look at this.
This is the performance results on just the warrants that they get on their venture debts.
So when you issue venture debt, you take a write down or you get paid back.
And then you also get some warrants. You get some a write down or you get paid back, and then you also
get some warrants.
You get a write to buy shares in the winners and the startups that work.
The way that SVP has made money on their venture debt portfolio historically is hopefully they
get paid back on all their loans, some of them they don't, but then they'll make a bunch
of money on selling their warrants or the company's going public or getting bought.
In Q4 of 2022, it just
fell off a cliff and their venture debt portfolio really started to show distress. And that's 10%
are these realized gains or these are marked to market gains? This is the net gains on their warrants
so they don't mark the market warrants. I think this is what they actually exercised and got out.
So there was, there was obviously a ton of exits in 2021. So they made $560 million in profit
on their warrants that they had in their venture debt portfolio in 2021. So they made $560 million in profit on their warrants
that they had in their venture debt portfolio in 2021. That number collapsed to $148 in 2022.
And you better believe most of that was in the early part of 2022. So they didn't do a quarterly
breakdown on this. This was like their full year numbers. But their venture debt portfolio,
which is another $7 billion capital, also distressed.
Certainly, wasn't going to perform as everyone had modeled.
So when you kind of start to add this all up, and remember, if you go back to the beginning,
they only had $15 billion of true net book value, which is the difference between their assets
and their liabilities.
And so if you really start to adjust, what are those assets really worth?
Are they really worth what they're holding them at the book at?
And if people start to pull money out and you got to sell them at a distressed price in order to give people
their cash, that they're owed on deposits, that's when you have a classic run on the bank
problem. And then everyone tries to be the first out the door. And that's basically like
what triggered this this week.
Can I give you guys my little version of all of this? I think there are three buckets,
but before I go into the three buckets, I just want to say to all of the employees at these companies, I think we, the four of us, are so truly sorry for what's going on
and what you guys are going through. And then to founders that are trying to navigate this, it must be unbelievably tough.
There are a few founders in our portfolio. So, you know, from all of us, just know that we're thinking of you guys,
and hopefully everybody ends up on the other side of this by Monday or Tuesday, with not a lot of
damage. So, let's just put that out there as sort of like goodwill and kind of good juju in the world
for the next couple of years here. This is going to be a really difficult weekend for people who are
trying to navigate this. I think it's well said. I mean, I, who didn't get paid access to culture in really, really tough shape right now,
trying to figure out how do I make payroll. And it's a big question.
Okay, so just putting a pin in that because we'll come back to it. I think that
this whole debacle, I guess, is the maybe the best word. There's a little bit of blame that you can put at the feet
of three different groups of actors.
And I just wanna get your guys's reaction to this.
So group number one,
and Freeberg just mentioned this,
is we, the four of us,
have been talking for the last 18 months
about the impact of rising rates.
And we talked a lot about, for example,
like in our portfolio, my partners and I
walked into every company and made them
have at least enough money to get through mid 2025.
I've said this a bunch of times.
And so that was about having very difficult conversations
about making sure that you were husbanding cash
so that you had enough to weather any storm
that came on the horizon.
But it turns out that there was some group of VCs and companies
that just didn't get that memo and just kept spending like
nothing had changed.
But when other VCs have stopped giving you money and you're continuing to spend
like it was 2020, that's what caused this mismatch. And it was really the spark that lived
the fuse. So I think it's a really sad commentary at some level about the lack of governance
that we have inside of some of these companies, where folks are just not doing
the job that they're supposed to at these board levels.
I think people, and we've talked about this, have made venture too much of a popularity
contest where they are, you know, glad handing and smiling and not doing the hard work of
holding folks accountable.
And so some handful of VCs and some handful of founders just didn't get
this memo and it made what could have been a slower train wreck faster unnecessarily.
So I think that's worth talking about. Then I think if you look at what actually practically
happened over the last year and a half at SVB was that they were so desirous of profits
That they basically had a duration mismatch. So what is that?
Imagine you get a job and you know somebody's like hey freeberg. I'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars
Monthly over some number of months right in normal pay every two weeks or I'll pay you 200,000
But you only get paid once a year. Well, the problem with that second thing is you still have monthly bills that you have
to make up for before you get paid.
And so most people wouldn't take that job even if they paid you a lot more because you
have this durational mismatch.
You have to pay rent every month.
You have to pay bills on a monthly basis.
You have credit card bills, all these things.
And so you need to match the timing of your cash flows.
And so I think somewhere along the way, the risk folks at SVB just made a really large
miscalculation.
They basically went and bought 10-year risk in order to pay back money that could be called
on a daily or weekly basis.
That obviously in hindsight was not a good idea.
But more importantly,
to market. And they didn't adjust fast enough.
Well, they can't because they have these market
assets that were just getting clobbered in the head as rates got raised.
And then the third, the third thing is around regulators.
You know, after the great financial crisis, we went through a period where there
was hundreds of bank failures.
And then for the last decade, they've been virtually none, right?
They've been like a few here or there.
And the last one was just during COVID.
And so the regulators, I think, have done a really good job with Dodd-Frank and all of these
other things to clean up the banking laws and the reporting requirements and the capital
structures so that runs on banks
are more and more infrequent.
But they kept this crazy loophole around the accounting treatment of assets and they
allow these durational mismatches to appear in a bank's balance sheet.
And so I think there's a piece here for the regulators, which is,
here's an opportunity that's glaring and obvious now, and screaming about how we need to tighten
some more of the transparency that's required. It shouldn't be a group of armchair slutes
on seeking alpha that sniff this out three months before it happened. It should have actually
been a regulator that said, hey, hold on a second, something is happening here
that we don't like.
And so we need to figure it out.
But I think those are the three actors that are in play
and they each share a bit of the blame here.
Freeberg, Zach, what do you think?
Who is to blame here most for this?
Blow up or is this just the extravagant event
of the rate hikes happening in such a short
compressed period of time?
No, I mean, look, I think that SVB's risk management was terrible.
Obviously, they signed up for these long-data securities when the market they serve is incredibly
volatile, like Juma Saas, duration mismatch.
Really good point.
I would also say that there's a weird regulatory treatment where, apparently, if you buy these
10-year bonds, these 10-year mortgage-backed securities or 10-year treasuries, you don't
have to recognize the loss until you sell them, which is just bizarre.
So in other words, they should have been marking the positions to market. And
instead, they just were allowing these losses to a crew. I don't understand how the regulators
can allow that kind of system. I also don't understand how the regulators can allow a bank
to take customer deposits and loan them out to startups with his venture debt that we've
been talking about in the show, where 10% of the portfolio is basically being loan them out to startups with his venture debt that we've been talking about in the show,
where 10% of the portfolio is basically
being loaned out to startups who have no credit.
That's crazy.
We talked on the show a few months ago.
We actually, it's a good time to play the clip here
because what we saw, and Sachs and I, you know,
seeing at the series A level, you have a lot of times
founders would get this basically free money
in their minds.
I raised 10.
I get five in venture debt,
I can extend my runway, but that money comes due,
and here's the clip for when SACS and I were talking
about it just a couple episodes ago.
What I don't trust is whether the return models
on venture debt that were created over the last five to 10 years
will be a good predictor of what the returns will be
in the next five to 10 years will be a good predictor of what the returns will be in the next five ten years
When a lot of the mortality that should have happened in the past now happens in the future
Yeah, I mean this is just
Four or five episodes ago. We kind of nailed it startups have no collateral
They've no there's no security for that loan. How does that make sense? No, not true loan to a credit?
No, not true guys look I I disagree with you on this point look if you pull up the the slide that breaks down How does that make sense to make a loan to a credit startup? Not true.
Guys, look, I disagree with you on this point.
Look, if you pull up the slide that breaks down, so let's talk about venture debt for a
second because I've actually invested in a venture debt fund and I've seen the economics
on it.
The way that the venture debt model typically works is the lender loans money to the startup.
What they underwrite is what the current VCs in the startup say they're going to do to support the company in the future.
So their ability to get paid back in the future is largely predicated not on underwriting
the company and the performance of the business or the assets they have, but it's underrided
by the fact that the VCs are committed to continuing to put money in and hopefully see
that this thing has a big outcome.
There is no commitment.
There is no commitment.
I'm sorry.
I didn't. But let me tell you. Hold on, let me just finish. I get it. But the asset as an asset class,
we can make fun of it all we want. It's actually performed pretty well. These guys have generated
typically 18% as an industry. Kind of a bull market. And yeah, and you're right. It's the same
as venture and the way votes and the way that they generate those returns is that they're
Loaning money to the startups a bunch of those startups fail. They don't get paid back and then the ones that succeed
They actually take warrants in the startups
So they have some equity upside in the startup and that's the way the model works
We can make fun of it all we want it actually works as an industry
Let me tell you why that broke is it goes back to the point you made earlier in the show, which is the lender has this expectation
that the VCs are going to keep investing.
Well, what if they don't?
We've been in a generally up into the right bull market since the last crash.
For the money.
For the money.
I believe that the data for all these models is skewed because it assumes, again, an
environment in which companies keep raising up
rounds.
As soon as you get into a crisis in which that breaks, then the whole asset class breaks.
I think this was completely predictable.
But even if you think that this asset class is legitimate, I don't understand why banking
deposits could ever be used to fund it.
If you want to be a venture debt fund, go out and raise money from LPs,
because what happens is when you raise it with customer deposits, you're creating systemic
risks for the banking system.
100% your relation never will have that.
Even worse, under two assets are correlated because you're you're loaning it to people
who are depositing it. And in every other part of the private credit market,
that is exactly what you do, what SAC said.
You can't use customer deposits
to do some CLO deal,
or to back a PE play.
These are all LP capital that goes towards that.
This is the only sliver,
as far as I know,
where you take customer deposits
to create very
risky loans, wrapped with warrant coverage.
And by the way, this stuff is never free, right?
So they make you keep your money there.
They make you have enough money to cover the size of the loan in the first place.
So it's not even that valuable because if they give you eight million dollar loan, you
have to have eight million dollars always on deposit.
Otherwise you violate the otherwise you know, you breach the loan. So there is no free lunch in
venture debt. There has never been. And I still think venture debt is very much like venture
capital, which is most of these gains are on paper. Most of these gains haven't really
been realized. And now we're going to go through this sorting process when all of this
stuff gets whacked. I do want to sexy your reaction to this, though, which is the thing that started this was
the fact that VCs, seeing the markets imploding, stopped giving companies money, but they
didn't do enough work to help founders cut burn.
As we've said it themselves, the burn stayed the same.
What is going on inside of these
I think that's crazy because listen
I mean we started doing portfolio updates with our entire portfolio of founders in February last year
Saying the Sureshim change you got to cut costs. We did another one in May
You can watch them both on YouTube, okay?
And we were telling founders hot your burn do it now don't wait. We were beating the drum on this so hard
in every board meeting and privately,
and it takes multiple times, frankly, to get through.
I think your point, Tramoth,
about not wanting to be unpopular
with the founder crowd led some young capital allocators
to maybe say, okay, yeah, let's try this, Ditch effort
before we do another riff?
Let's try this new product.
Let's change our sale strategy.
I don't think it's young versus old.
I think it's experience versus unexperienced.
No, I think it's okay, that's better.
I think that's better.
I think there is an experience.
There is an experience.
Listen, if you've never lived through a bear market,
you don't know how bad I can get.
And tech is a boom bus cycle and the bus are really hard.
Really hard.
Really hard.
And if you've never lived through a regime change before,
like there was in 2008,
and 2009, or in 2000,
2001, the worst, yeah.
2001 to three.
Well, yeah.
Well, I'm pretty sure you have no idea.
And, you know,
and I think experience does matter.
And there aren't that many VCs around
who live through the dot com crowd.
Probably 85% of not.
By the way, if you guys pull up the dissadslide on the loan portfolio at SVB, There aren't that many VCs around who live through the Dockham crowd. No, probably 85% of not.
By the way, if you guys pull up the dissaduct slide on the loan portfolio at SVB, I just want
to make the case.
A sacs, I hear you, it's a risky, it seems like a risky investment to make.
But don't you guys agree that a balance sheet business like SVB, or an insurance company,
or any business that has some amount of money coming in that sits on the balance sheet
and then they invested for a period of time, there's a laddering of risk and there's a laddering
of duration that you have.
So, if you look at Silicon Valley Bank from the update they did last week that figured
all of this, if you look at SVP's loan portfolio, 70% are really these asset back loans, which
are 56% of the portfolio is like prepayments on LP commitments and then
14% is private banking loans, which is loans against public securities that people have.
Only 10% of the portfolio is venture debt, which is $7 billion. And, you know, look, if the asset
historically is performed at an 18% kind of rate of return, what is the, you venture that portfolio going to look like in the distressed environment?
Is it negative 100%, is it negative 50%, negative 40%, negative 30%.
I mean, you guys can have a point of view on this, but you look, I mean, for any business
that's managing a large balance sheet of assets against, you know, a short kind of liability
tree, they're going to have some riskier assets.
I think, you know, the question is, was 10% too much
of the loan portfolio.
I think 1%'s too much.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, to that, you know, one of the issues here
that we saw qualitatively, and Sachs and I,
both saw qualitatively, is the standard for giving these
and the size of them got lower and lower.
In fact, the covenants went away,
and this is what we kept having hundreds of us. It has no covenants. They offer be no covenants. I don't have to have a certain
amount of cash. I don't have a half a certain amount of revenue. Those covenants were there for a reason
to filter out the people who can't afford the house, right? And this is exactly what happened in 2008
when people started giving those no recourse or no background check. Mortgages, remember those
where like you didn't have to do a background check to get a mortgage?
That's what happened in venture.
They just gave these, I saw at first hand, Willie Nilly, I begged founders to not take them
and I only won that discussion sacks one out of five times because founders are like money.
We're having this debate, but there's no indication and there were no losses in this portfolio
to date that show the adventure that's under performing.
We're saying this is stupid.
What's the expression?
Cash performance is no guarantee a future performance.
Exit obvious to us on this podcast.
You guys are arguing about venture debt when the real loss that happened at SVB was the
fact that they put a bunch of treasuries and it was great.
It went from 2% to 5%.
Let me have a look.
There's two things going on here.
Okay, free bird.
When I see your chart and you talk about
latering this and latering that and X%
and all this kind of stuff,
I think about the smartest guys in the room.
Okay, this is long-term capital management.
This is N1, this is the 2008 bank failure.
They think they can basically do financial engineering
to make this work.
You know why it doesn't work?
It's because number one, they're not in fully liquid assets,
number two, they're not marking to market every day.
If you're a deposit bank,
you should be required to keep all of your assets
in fully liquid securities
that you mark to market every day.
It's that simple.
And what do they do?
They put it in 10-year duration mortgage bonds.
We need to explain this.
That got on where the value got devastated
with the rise of interest rates.
They didn't have to mark that to market.
And second, they put 10% of the portfolio
in basically loans to creditless startups.
So when there is a run on the bank,
you have a, what, like roughly 30% gap
between deposits and the actual, the value of their portfolio.
Yeah, and listen, that shouldn't be allowed.
And the reason it's allowed is frankly, I think regulators are completely asleep at the
wheel.
Where's Powell?
Where's Yellen?
Two days ago, two days ago, Powell was testifying in front of the banking committee and
they asked him, do you see any systemic risks in the banking system because of the rapid
rise in interest rates? He said, you see any systemic risks in the banking system because of the rapid rise in interest rates?
He said, no, no systemic risk.
Sacks is right.
I agree.
The rise in interest rates is the key driver here.
It drove down venture investing.
It drove down valuations.
And it's driving down the value of long-gerated bond
portfolios, which, by the way, is the main standard
of how a lot of these businesses invest and operate.
And it's called distress and stress on the system.
My biggest concern is the contagion effect that arises next.
If you go in and you continue to assume interest rates climb and everyone's holding onto these
bonds and they're getting written down, meanwhile, you owe people all this money and cash.
And the other thing that's happening, if you hold cash today, you're likely want to hire
interest rates to compete with treasuries.
Because you can invest in treasuries today and make sure five percent.
That's a foster second here. I just today and make sure we're far from the second here.
I just want to make sure that the audience understands.
And Yellen put out a statement today, Jake, I'll just to finish the thought that they're
monitoring the situation.
Yes.
She's sitting there like a bump on a log.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
They need to be out front.
They don't understand like that this is a cascading situation.
This is an eye or an eye grant.
Either this weekend, they place SVB in the hands
of a JP Morgan, they do basically a bolster.
Or a Wal-Moo.
They either do that this weekend
or this thing keeps cascading next week.
And look, I could be wrong.
Maybe they're working on it right now behind the scenes
if they are crudos to them.
They'll have an announcement before the market opens on Monday.
But if they're not and the yelling's the Lovett announcement before the market opens on Monday. But if they're not,
and the yelling's just like we're monitoring the situation,
while three days ago she was in Ukraine,
this is incompetence at work.
All right, hold on.
We'll figure out a way for you to do this
to de-jag your eight six next.
Take a pause.
He connected Silicon Valley bank to Ukraine.
It was, exactly.
It was beautiful.
The piece here that's,
what's our secret and treasury doing in Ukraine?
I mean, seriously. Okay, take it easy important for the standard. What's our standard? Treasury doing in Ukraine. I mean, seriously.
Take it easy, take it easy.
Here's what happened, just so people understand.
US Treasuries were at 102, you get like a 2% a year.
They bought a bunch of those.
That was actually when you think about it,
you would say that's a safe bet.
The problem is those are locked up for 10 years.
And nobody anticipated on the Silicon Valley bank team that the rate hike would happen so quickly, so violently. Remember we saw
the 25, 25, 50, 50, 75, 75, all those increases. Now what happens to a 2% US treasury when
the interest rate goes up is they get devalued. They're not worth as much. So if you did need to
sell them, you would have to sell them at a discount.
If you held them to maturity,
you would get that complete return.
And what happened here is they needed to sell these early
and they sold them early and they took a massive loss,
billions of dollars, and that's what lit the fuse.
That's the slide I showed like the price base.
I just want to make sure the audience understands that.
If they had sold these earlier,
or if they hadn't bought these,
they would have not have to stop it. Go ahead, stop it. Now why in that meeting did they have to decide to emergency
sell? It's because VCs stopped giving startups money. So startups couldn't deposit more
money into the bank, but they kept spending at the same rate that they were spending.
Which means that the deposits went down. Yeah.
In the last 18 months, not enough folks read the memo.
Yes.
And by the way, the tragedy of that is,
let's just say that you did get the memo
and you did make the hard cuts.
Right?
Now, let's say you're working on something,
and you can fill in the blank on the thing that you care about.
Okay, so for the listeners, let's say it's climate change.
Let's say it's breast cancer research, whatever it is,
they said nothing to do with you four days ago.
You had your money in the bank, you did everything you needed to do to go and figure out product
market fit, try to get to market, try to sell your product, and all of a sudden, because
of some other set of folks and actors who couldn't get their act together.
Now you're on the precipice of bankruptcy in 36, 48 hours.
That's crazy to me.
This is the challenge, SACS.
I think you could speak to this as well, is we did all this portfolio management over
the last year.
These were the troubled companies.
And then yet the companies, a large portion who did the right thing, they had a big war chest and they had
set the burn at the right pace.
And now they, the other portion are portfolio that had big war chest, they're now at risk.
So if you're a capital allocator right now, you're looking at a group of companies that
you tried your best to save and they're, and they're angled and they're wounded.
And now the strong ones are wounded too.
This is cataclysmic for Silicon Valley.
If this does not get stopped this weekend,
not only, and I don't wanna be hysterical.
Yeah, this is a meteor hitting the dinosaur
at this extinction level event.
You're right, Jake Allison.
We have portfolio companies that had tens or millions
or more in Silicon Valley bank.
And their account showed that their money
was in the safest money market funds.
Money market funds with a publicly traded ticker symbol
that were managed by BlackRock or Morgan Stanley, okay?
That's what their accounts showed them they had.
And then they're told all of a sudden,
no, you're only protective to $250,000.
Everything above that, that your money market fund is just an asset of SVB, which is in
receivership.
You got a certificate.
Yeah, and you got a certificate.
Do you see this announcement?
By the way, I mean, the California regulator made things worse.
The California regulator stepped in and they froze everything.
So our companies were in the process.
We have companies that submitted a wire yesterday.
By the way, we spent all day yesterday
on the phone with our portfolio companies
trying to get them out.
We had wire requests that went in for the deadline
and for some reason we're gonna...
Thank you.
They didn't get through.
And they didn't get out.
They didn't get through.
And then the telephone regulator steps in this morning
and freezes everything and what do they announce?
He said, oh, you're good.
You're good for your insured amounts.
How much is that? $250,000. For your uninsured said, oh, you're good, you're good for your insured amounts. How much is that?
$250,000.
For your uninsured amounts, which is everything above $250, you're going to get a certificate.
A certificate?
What does that mean?
That means you're a creditor in bankruptcy.
So the mutual fund that you thought you owned was actually not hypothesated in your name.
It was in SVB's name at BlackRock.
And so our companies have been calling BlackRock and calling Morgan Stanley saying, hey,
do you have my money market fund?
And they're like, no, sorry, that's SVB.
So now this is the crazy thing.
Now, they're sitting in a creditor line in bankruptcy.
We got to explain this.
These were called sweep accounts.
So what Silicon Valley bank did with some of these large portfolio holders?
Let's say SACs and a bunch of other VCs gave you 30 million bucks
Yes, and they would they took your money and they said you know what just to be safe
We're gonna take your money will automatically sweep it and distribute it across two other accounts
So we got this black rock over here for you great. We got this Morgan Stanley over here great whatever it is
You could only get to those through the Silicon Valley bank interface.
And so it was supposed to protect you, but there is no recourse it seems.
Those are frozen too.
So the only thing you can do, that's logical.
And I had a mentor 30 years ago when I had the magazine and we started hitting millions
of dollars in revenue.
And he said, I said, how much money we have in the bank?
He's like, which bank account?
And he had four bank accounts and he would load balance them.
And he did it every Friday.
God bless Elliot Cook.
He did it every Friday for me and I've always done that.
I've always had multiple bank accounts and load
balance them.
But in this case Silicon Valley bank did it through one
interface.
I have multiple startups today who did this exact thing
sax and they couldn't even log into Silicon Valley
bank today to even see where they're at.
I mean, I think you can't wait.
Everything got frozen.
And the California regulator froze them and they brought in the FDIC.
So there's a couple of problems now with the working out of this.
This is basically a bankruptcy process or a receivership process.
It's that we've got all these companies that need to make payroll in the next few weeks,
right?
And so these processes don't work at startup time.
If you could just figure out like over the weekend, okay, SVB lost $0.30 on
the dollar and everyone's just going to be pro-rated and you're going to get $0.70 on the dollar
and you're going to get your money on Monday, it would be a hit to the starbeacosystem
but people would recover and move on. But the fact of the matter is it's not going to be
on Monday. It could take weeks or months to figure out how many cents on the dollar you
have.
Are they liquidating silver, belly, bellyfied? Are they selling the debt?
Is everybody getting laid out?
If DIC is going to liquidate everything.
Well, you have two paths here.
Path number one is if you actually try to sell these assets,
but the problem is, who do you think the buyer is?
The buyer are the sharpest sharps on Wall Street
who will purposefully underbeade these assets.
And so that then takes you to path two, which is then the only other real solution is for
the Fed to warehouse them and guarantee them.
And that's an equivalent version of what they had to do during the Great Financial Crisis,
which it was this thing called TARP, which is the troubled asset relief plan.
It was just a backstop and a mechanism so that at the time, those toxic assets, which
were a bunch of mortgage-backed loans, could be cleared through the system over time, which
effectively meant that the Fed basically warehoused that risk.
So I think what we need to see now is, is, SACS, it could be $0.50 on the dollar.
It could be $0.60 if you want immediate liquidity.
A friend in our group chat was mentioning that there was one claim, a company that had
a hundred million dollars inside of SVB, was offered 60 cents on the dollar today for
that claim.
Now, that's a third party from a third party who said, I will give you 60 million today
in return for that certificate plus the 250,000 that says
you're owed 100 million because they're willing to take the risk that they'll get 80 million,
right?
And then they take the difference.
Now, the point is that if you're seeing today that kind of a discount, that's not a good
sign, I think.
And it does speak to the fact that regulators have to step in.
Now, here's the other reason why I think it's important.
I think what regulators and I think the people, and there's a lot of them in Washington
that listen to this, what this does is it torches years of U.S. innovation, and you should
not let that happen.
There are companies working on really important things for the United States and for the rest of the world.
And if the company fails because they can't make the product work, so be it.
We take that risk every day.
If the company fails because customers don't want to buy it, so be it.
If the product fails because a better product comes out, so be it.
But it shouldn't fail because we can't get money that is in for your
paid deposit. That should not be why we torch hundreds of startups in what they're working
on. This is maybe thousands. Yeah. This is a, this would be a lost decade, a lost decade
for Silicon Valley.
Check out. First of all, do you guys want to talk about second and third order effects?
Just a few really understand those because I think it's important to highlight why it's not just about a couple hundred tech
bros in Silicon Valley not being able to make payroll, but there's important downstream
consequences.
For example, there are payment processing companies in Silicon Valley that use Silicon
Valley bank to store their capital and to move money around.
There are payroll companies that do payroll for many businesses,
not just tech businesses, but many businesses in different parts of the economy that store their
cash at Silicon Valley Bank and process money through Silicon Valley Bank. Today, it was announced
that rippling, one of those companies could not hit their payroll cycle today because they had money
tied up at Silicon Valley Bank. Fortunately, they announced that they also have money at JP Morgan
and other places. So they will be able to get the payroll processed early next
week and get everyone back on track. But this is hundreds and potentially thousands of companies
that use their payroll software to process and pay their employees. And then there's all the
payment processors. We don't know how many of them have what level of exposure and a lot of infrastructure
companies that move money in and through Silicon Valley bank. And so if they start to go down and
then payroll doesn't hit the air conditioning company that's using the tool in some, you know,
in Arizona. And then, you know, the Stripe Service isn't able to process e-commerce payments for
a small business owner that runs a website. You can start to see how there can be very significant
trickling effects. And more importantly, like we saw in
O8, perhaps to a different degree, but still a significant
concern, is the contagion of panic, where people say,
if there isn't reliability in the things that I thought
were reliable before, I start to have real questions in
the soundness of the system overall.
And that's why it's so important to sacs ed, to step in, shore up the problem this weekend.
I don't think it's about bidding 50 cents
or 60 cents on the dollar.
Every depositor needs to get paid 100% of their money.
And that cash needs to be made available to them
by early next week.
And if that money is not available to them,
within the first 48 or 72 hours of the end of this weekend,
then we are gonna have a real crisis on our hands.
Because then you will see a lot of people trying to move money away from any institution that stores
their money in some sort of security that's not 100% like with like cash. And that's going to cost.
That's going to cost not. That's going to cost a massive run. And so what has to happen, the only
way this can happen is if someone takes over Silicon Valley bank this weekend and that the federal government, unfortunately,
as much as I hate to say it,
because I absolutely hate the federal government
having a role in this stuff,
has to say we will guarantee 100% of those deposits
to the company that takes over,
the bank that takes over this portfolio,
and says, let the portfolio of assets run its lifetime,
see what you get paid,
whatever the delta is, we'll make it up to you,
but we need to make sure that there's cash here today for all of these depositors to get
paid tomorrow.
You had something you wanted to say.
If not, I have something I want to say.
The other big thing that SVB was an on-ramp for a lot of investors, including many U.S.
investors, to get money into China.
And without commenting on whether that's right, wrong, or indifferent, the point is that
China has a very complicated capital market structure, which requires you to basically use
an offshore bank, i.e. non-domesticated Chinese bank, and to be able to get those dollars.
And so what would happen is Chinese startups that raise money would raise money from US
investors and abroad using these bank accounts.
And so this issue now doesn't just touch the United States innovation economy.
It also touches China's innovation economy, which, you know, creates actually a complicated
set of trade-offs for the US government in Treasury as they think about what they want
to do in this heightening great power conflict that SACS talked about last week.
And I want to just make a very important nuance point here.
I know there is no bank that the public, specifically, you know, people who don't want to support,
you know, rich people already, like big tech or billionaires.
The reason to backstop this with public money is because we have a roadmap for this.
People don't know this widely, but tarp was just over $400 billion.
It actually returned a $15 billion profit to the American people.
This would require maybe $25 or $50 billion.
10% maybe, 5% 10% of the totality of tarp would be enough to cover what's happening here
with Silicon Valley Bank and work this out.
That's $50 billion for the people listening in Washington
or for the people who will say,
hey, why are we, you know, bailing out big tech?
You're bailing out small tech, as Chimalt said.
You're bailing out innovation on breast cancer
on, you know, renewable energy.
But most importantly, this can easily be structured
so that the American people return 20%, 30%,
maybe even double their money.
You could structure this so it is senior to everything else and is exactly what the government
is supposed to do when there is a crisis.
That doesn't mean the people who run Silicon Valley Bank should have their equity worth
a lot.
They should get wiped out.
They didn't do their job properly.
The equity, the people who ran the management team there, if they don't get anything, that's okay.
They understand that.
But the people who had their money at deposit
to pay the salaries and to pay for this innovation,
it is unconscionable that we wouldn't backstop it.
And the guarantee you, the US government
could get some warrants on those companies
or warrants in ownership in Silicon Valley bank
and make at least 50 cents
on the dollar, maybe even double and that's the way this ballot should be structured and it has
to be done this weekend. You bring up a great idea. I think if the US balance sheet does step in
over the weekend, I'm going to say on behalf of the US taxpayer, you must get a piece of these companies.
And the reason why is that that's the way to make it fair for everybody that's not in
tech who's on the outside looking in.
And if you look inside of Twitter as an example, there's a lot of negative sentiment around
even the idea of a bailout happening.
And it's for this exact reason because I think people believe that it will benefit just
a small sliver of people, right?
So to step in and to save these companies, Jason, would still be, you know, really only
helping, say, several hundred thousand or several, you know, and the thing that that gets
wrong, in my opinion, is that these companies, if they're allowed to
germinate, should be building things that actually help everybody. And so, including
jobs at taxes. Including, and so if you can view it that way, and if you can view a share of it,
now obviously look, we're very, we have a very deep incentive for that to happen.
But I think it's important to present the other side of it.
The other side would say this industry has a little bit run amok.
It's not well regulated.
You know you guys push the boundaries and get away with a lot, and there are a lot of consequences.
You're saying the tech industry.
No, I'm saying the average person that's on the outside looking into the tech
industry can make that claim. And now they would be pointing at big tech, but the problem is we all get swept in together under the same thing.
And then what they would say is, I don't think it's right to to step in. And I think that you have to give the US taxpayer an incentive if they are going to do it.
And I think the incentive should be that they should just get a share in all this innovation.
If they take over the venture debt portfolio, then they would have that, right?
The venture debt portfolio comes with warrants, so they would have that.
I think there's a big risk here that precisely because tech is unpopular and people I think
are confusing big tech with small tech, that the government doesn't step in here and the dominoes start falling
and we start getting all the systemic risks playing out.
Remember, the beneficiaries here aren't just the sort of current generation of tech companies
and everyone they do business with.
It's also wherever the contagion goes next.
And we're already seeing, I think, multiple regional banks under pressure.
There's stock down. People asking questions. We know people in our tech groups who are wiring money out as fast as they can.
Just because why take a chance?
You have to understand that the game theory around these bank runs, people describe them as a panic.
But that implies that it's irrational. It's not irrational.
It's actually rational.
And what this is really highlighted is that what you said earlier at the beginning, Sachs,
which is that the regulatory oversight is actually extremely pristine at the biggest banks.
But the smaller and smaller you get, there's a level of opacity and well here lack of regulatory follow through that allows us to build
to the Wall Street Journal right now is reporting that US banks have 620 billion
of unrealized losses just on treacheries. I don't know what the unrealized
losses are on these long dated mortgage backed securities. Like I said, I have no
idea why regulators allow banks to hold these bonds at their book value instead of marking
them to market every day.
That's crazy.
And on the equity side, you have to do it.
Buffett talks about this all the time.
The equity side, you have to mark the market, the equity portfolio at the end of every quarter.
And he sees these wild swings and he complains about it, but it's the right thing to do for
exactly this reason.
Right.
So think about the game theory here, okay?
The banking system, the banking regulators
have created this opacity in the system.
You've got all of these assets
that are being held by these banks
that are not marked to market,
so nobody really knows what the true level of exposure is.
So what's the response?
Why take a chance?
This move your money to JP Morgan.
So I think there's a chance that if the
federal government doesn't step in here, the whole regional banking system could be decimated and you're just going to be
left with four too big to fail banks. How's that benefit anybody? That doesn't benefit the little guy?
There's a pretty good set of regulatory disclosures that happen, but I do think that the real question
is, you know, are the ratios right? Should they really be allowed to invest in these types of assets with the positive capital? And if so, with what percent of the depositor capital should they be allowed
to do it? And maybe, you know, that seems to be where the biggest, you know, issue is. We've come a
long way. I mean, I just pulled up the statistic. It's insane. There were 505 banks that failed
in 1921. Failures continued to rise in the early 20s and averaged 680 banks per year
failed between 1923 and 1929. So obviously, you know, coming out of 08, there was a lot of controversy
around, hey, banks can't make money anymore. It's too restrictive, the disclosures and so on.
The disclosures are actually quite good. You know, you guys can go to these sites that regulate
the banks. You can go to the SEC site. You can get a very detailed schedule of every asset held by every one
of these banks. It's good transparency, I would argue, but should they be allowed to invest
in securities that are effectively not fully liquid, that are risky, that are long dated
with short dated deposits, right? It seems it's a fundamental question about what banks are
supposed to be doing. In a world of computers that can calculate everything, the idea that you can't solve
duration matching doesn't seem like one of those problems that's intractable in 2023.
I mean, if people can make an AI version of the podcast, they could do that. Yeah.
I mean, Freeberg also like take this, I think venture debt's the most extreme example.
How do you mark to market alone to a series A startup?
I mean, that just 100% depends
on whether you're going to raise a stream.
I'm a believer you can underwrite anything.
I think you can under, for the right interest rate,
for the right premium, you can underwrite insurance,
you can underwrite loans.
I mean, there's a lot of ways that you could kind of,
but how do you mark that to market on a daily basis?
You're right, no, you cannot.
You're right, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
And so from a reporting
perspective, that's why I think how does that solve the problem? No, they've got different
tiers of regular Tory capital guys. And so, you know, there are rules around what the
ratios need to be and where you need to fall. And so they they they bucket the stuff up
differently, right? If you're a bank and you want to buy securities, you want to invest
in something that's not liquid and market to market every day.
You should have to package it up in some period of time
and sell it.
If you're going to make a loan to a venture back startup,
package those up and syndicate that and sell it as a security.
And if you can't do that, you probably
should be investing in the asset class anyway.
Same thing with mortgage.
These mortgages already get packaged up and sold., this doesn't make sense to me that like customer deposits, as
we're talking about, which you assume should always be 100% safe, right? This is not a
source of capital where anyone's ever expecting to lose money. If you want to use risk capital
to get some sort of outsized return, go raise that from LPs. But to like take customer deposits and use it on risky, non-liquid investments, it makes
sense.
There's one thing I could just help people frame this.
The aggregate amount of dollars in these bank accounts, I would estimate, equals 10%
of the value of the startups they represent.
Would we all agree on that? It's about 10% of the value of the startups they represent. Would we all agree on that?
It's about 10% of the value of those startups, maybe 20.
If, how do you, how do you calculate?
I'm thinking about the startups who recently did
around to funding, they diluted 10%.
That represents all of their treasury or half of their treasury.
So if that cash for the startup portion of this
equals 10% of the value of startups, I can guarantee you those startups with access to that capital again Monday will
be able to outperform the backstop that the government would provide.
This sounds like Enron Math to me.
No. Okay. If you, one of your startups, just take any of your startups, they have 30 million
and so on.
We don't have time. Listen, we don't have time here for the government to figure out how
to be a partner in an investor in all these startups. I'm sorry, we don't have time. Listen, we don't have time here for the government to figure out how to be a partner in or an investor
in all these startups.
I'm sorry, we don't.
They're either stepping in or they don't.
If they do step in, you'll have systemic failure.
No, no, but do the math with me here.
Of one of the companies, pick one of the companies
that has 20, you have a company that has 20 million
there or 30 million there.
What does that represent if you were to take their valuation
from last year when they raised that money cut and have?
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's the depositor. It does not matter. It matters for people to understand how much value is going to be lost
and how easily recoverable it is if these companies are allowed in aggregate to deploy that capital. That's the point you're not getting or I'm not explaining to you properly. If allowed to deploy that, it's going to return a multiple, an adventure multiple, two,
three, four, five X.
But if we destroy that money, these companies are going out of business next month.
But Jacob, that money is their money.
That's their deposit.
I agree with you.
I'm trying to create a framing here for people to understand exactly how much value is
going to be lost.
I think the better framing is that when you put your money
in a FDIC-insured bank and you put it in a customer deposit
that's supposed to be completely safe,
that's paying you a couple of percent interest
and that is reflected even as a money market fund
on your account, you do not expect that money
to be turned around by the bank and put in risk
to access.
So you say, raise the FDIC limits.
That makes no sense.
Raise the FDIC. The bank should not work that way, Ray, the FDX is limits. That makes no sense. Ray, the FDX.
The bank should not work that way.
Okay.
Look, I think it's crazy that you could set up a bank account,
okay, because you just want to write checks.
And you could lose that money
because the bankers decided to loan it to some startup.
That's insane.
Or the bankers decided to buy a 10 year mortgage back security
who doesn't understand interest rate risk.
That's not the way the system's supposed to work.
And you got all these people on Twitter pushing back no bailouts or whatever. That's the depositors
money. I agree, no bailout for SVB. They should lose everything. All those executives or stock
options are worthless. All the stockholders of that company, their shares are worthless. But the
question is should depositors lose money in these banks? They just thought they're starting for a
checking account. I mean, are you kidding me? And if you let that happen, there will be a cascade here because the
logical
consequence will be everybody's gonna say,
put my money in JP Morgan or Wells Farger, a Bank of America. There'll be four banks. That's it. And all the regional banks are gonna shut down.
That's what happens here.
Tens of thousands of highly paid workers and not just tech workers are gonna be out of
jobs and they don't have jobs waiting for them at Amazon or Google to bail them out. And this is the
start of a contagion if it doesn't get to that. Yeah, what do they do wrong, J. Cal? What do they do
wrong? Nothing. They used what is considered one of the most reputable banks in the world.
They used a top 20 bank that the regular said was in compliance. So did they do something wrong?
Or were the regulators asleep at the wheel?
I don't know. Some way, I think this is Biden's fault or it's a landscape.
It's the Biden or it's the landscape's fault. What do you guys think this means for VC?
It is a chilling effect. I talk with some LPs in the last two days in the VC world.
I'll give you a couple anecdotes.
I have a friend, runs a fund.
He looked at his portfolio.
They have $270 million, or sorry, $350 million tied up at Silicon Valley Bank.
They need $27 million for cash for the next 30 days.
So he's called his LPs and he's trying to get his LPs to front him money, to wire
money so that he can front his companies money so they can actually pay their operating expenses
and cover their payroll. And then I spoke with a couple of LPs in the last 48 hours. They
have gotten dozens of calls from various venture funds. Everyone is asking the same question.
Can we do a capital call? Can we get money delivered early? Can we use that money to support our companies because
they're cash is stuck? Coming out of this, the uncertainty that this creates in the investment
environment, I think it's going to have a real chilling effect, not just with the GPs
and their, you know, perclivity to sign term sheets right now and wire new money over, but
also with the LPs as they're making capital commitments and actually following through with capital
commitments that have already been made, given, you know, where's the capital actually going
to land up?
That was never a question mark before.
It was never anything that anyone even considered that capital could be disappeared or locked
up or tied up.
And the fact that this is adding this unique friction in the market is a layer
on top of an already distressed and challenged environment for fundraising, for GPs, for LPs.
And it seems to be exactly the icing on the cake we did not need right now, no matter how this
gets a result. I think private markets in VC could seize. I think you're going to see people
pull-term sheets, maybe half as many fundings are going
to occur as people try to do triage.
Another VC friend of mine just sent me a text.
He can't make payroll next week.
He has a fund.
For VC fund.
His VC fund, their employees cannot, he cannot pay his employees on Monday.
Oh, Lord.
And so, yes, I do think funds could shut down coming out of this.
I think that companies that were call it 75% distressed are done for now.
No one's going to step in and bridge them and fund them.
It's going to accelerate a lot of shutdowns because people are now cash is king, now cash
is king are, right?
It's like a big shift.
I think that was really well said.
I think you're right about all that.
J.H.H.O.U.T.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.R.E.E a few winners. You're picking one or two winners, and you're going to focus on that.
You're going to say, you know what, the rest of them could be good, but I can't.
It's going to be a tough decision.
I have three open deals right now that we're doing.
I now have to figure out how to get those deals done, and I have four companies that are
in this payroll situation in a major way.
So now I've got capital, and I've got to, and we're not personally affected by the Silicon Valley Bank thing, thank God.
But now we have to, do you triage the known winners in your portfolio
that did nothing wrong? Or do you make the next three investments?
Or four investments? And I'm going to make good on those three investments.
But next month, maybe not. Maybe next month, I'm taking off and I'm focusing on the portfolio. And I think that's what's going to happen, writ
large. We're in triage mode now, full on triage mode. If this doesn't get resolved, if
they can't get those, what do you think? This dark. I had a meeting three weeks ago with
a US LP. And you know, you guys know how I run this business here,
but there's like a lot of risk management.
We think about this stuff a lot.
And the message that came back to me was,
I don't think risk management is worthwhile inventor.
I didn't understand where that was coming from,
because if you're investing your money across a very
risky asset class, you have to be always thinking about how you could lose money.
And I think that venture has always romantically been described as like buying lottery tickets.
And so it doesn't matter if you lose.
But when you have that kind of attitude, you just become super complacent.
And you don't think about left-tail risk.
You only think about right-tail outcomes.
And this is an example of left-tail risk
that came out of nowhere that could wipe out
entire portfolios.
So you had folks invest into funds
that spent a few years, probably 2019, 2020, 2021, really misallocating money, right?
Writing ginormous checks into companies that valuations that didn't make sense, who then
went and burned it.
And now what little cash they had left may also be gone, which means those valuations
are even more impaired, which means that the LPs that gave them the money are even more
underwater.
And that cycle, I think, is really terrible. That'll take a... So maybe this is the wake-up call
where now risk management is actually in vogue and cool, and it's important to know this stuff.
I don't know. We have breaking news. Well, the taping this, the Department of Financial
Protection and Innovation of the State of California has published findings on SVB. We'll pull it up on the screen for the besties to respond to. On March 8, 2023, the bank announced a loss of approximately 1.8
billion from the sale of investments. We've talked about that already. On March 8, 2023, the bank's
holding company announced it was conducting a capital raise. Despite the bank being in sound
financial condition prior to March 9,, 2023 investors and depositors reacted.
By initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits. So that would be over 20% I think of the total deposits from the bank on March 9th, or even more, 2023 closing a run on the bank.
As of the close of business on March 9th, the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately $958 million, despite attempts from the bank with the assistance of regulators to transfer
collateral from various sources.
The bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve.
The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the bank to be incapable of paying its obligations
as they come to.
And the bank will sit in the beginning.
42 billion dollars of withdrawals Is 25% of total deposits.
But $42 billion is greater than the $14 billion cash they had on hand.
And the $26 billion of liquid securities that they had.
So you add those two up together, you're at $40 billion.
And then to get more cash, they're going to have to sell a bunch of loan portfolios.
And selling loan portfolios, you've got to package them up. It takes weeks or months to do that. And they're going to have to sell a bunch of loan portfolios and selling loan portfolios. You've got to package them up.
It takes weeks or months to do that and they're going to be sold to distress prices.
So this is where a classic run on the bank problem actually causes a decline in the asset
value of the business and the assets that they own.
Because if you have to go and turn around and sell those assets in the market super fast,
you're going to take a huge loss.
You guys remember that movie, Margin Call with Demi Moore and what's his name and they make this plan to go and
mark and they're like, we got to sell.
That's crazy. No, not Patrick's.
No, Jeremy Irons, Jeremy Irons, he plays the best character. He's like the chairman of the bank.
And they're like, we have to sell all this, but we're going to take a huge loss.
And they make this big trade that happens at the beginning of the morning.
But that's what happens when you have to sell a lot of assets very fast, as you guys know, you end up selling them at a discount.
So the rate at which deposits are coming out of the bank can actually impact the asset value held at the bank.
And that's fundamentally what a run on the bank causes.
And the irony is, as they point out, the company was fundamentally financially sound.
They had enough assets marked at the current market value
or whatever to meet all of their obligations,
but the rate at which assets started to get pulled out
is what drove the company the bank into distress.
And if you think about it,
it's an ironic point of view on Silicon Valley.
Because Silicon Valley operates with such,
we all joke about what it heard mentality
and what an incredibly
tied and deep network Silicon Valley is. We all got dozens and hundreds of texts and
messages from friends, colleagues, co-workers yesterday all relaying the news about what
they were going to do. And as soon as that happened, that's how tightly intertwined Silicon
Valley is. Within 24 hours, every CEO and every venture capitalist was on a
chat group or on a message group with other people in the valley. And once there was any indication
of panic, the entire market flipped. And you guys saw this, we all saw this within 24 hours.
But beginning of the day yesterday, it was like, it will get through it, it will be fine,
they just took a little mark down on their portfolio, they got plenty of assets. But then it's like,
well, founder's fund said we should probably get out
Okay, well founder is fun is getting out
Maybe we should get out before everyone else does well, we got to get up before everyone else does
Let's go now I'm getting out right now. I'm telling my best friend
I'm getting out right now and then everyone tells their second best friend and then all of a sudden the whole valley knows it
And then the whole valley is running for the door and this is a really interesting and unique
scenario. It's not like the classic consumer run on the bank
This is a really interesting and unique scenario. It's not like the classic consumer run on the bank where you're trying to pull cash out.
It's the Silicon Valley 24 hour cycle of, we all got to do it because everyone else is doing
like what we're seeing with investing cycles in Silicon Valley where everyone chases and
these bubbles emerge.
The reverse, I think, happened yesterday, where the herd mentality drove us all to rush
for the doors quickly as possible.
You know, I'm not sure that that might be why it's not as much of a contagion, you know,
as you might expect elsewhere because places other kind of regional banks don't have the
same sort of inter-windedness as we saw with all the depositors here in Silicon Valley
Bank.
I don't know.
I'm just be aware of that.
Yeah.
This is where I think that describing what happened as a panic kind of misses the fundamental rationality of the response
So yeah, so it does seem like a panic, but that doesn't mean that each individual decision-makers
Motivation is panic. I actually think it's a rational upside-down side
Calculation, I mean this is all game theory. So if you think that there's a risk of other people
pulling out their assets, and in fact, you're hearing
that they are, you don't wanna wait
and be the last one to leave.
And so you think about it, there's no penalty
or downside to taking your money out, right?
So the downside of taking your funds out immediately
is zero, and the upside is you might save
100% of your money.
So it's a rational decision when confidence is lost to take out your money.
And in fact, it was rational.
There were a bunch of VCs, not a lot, but some of them, training yesterday, that SVB has
been a great player in the ecosystem for 30 years.
We should show our support right now by not taking our money out.
Well, guess what?
What happened to them?
They got stuck and now their money is frozen and they're not sure whether they're getting, you know,
pennies on the dollar or not. Whereas the people who rushed for the exits yesterday
got their money out. It's prisoners dilemma. It is a prisoners dilemma. But here's the
thing. It's not even about anymore whether the institution is solvent. It's about whether
there's confidence.
And I think there is a risk now of contagion spreading
to these other regional banks
because people aren't sure.
And there's already huge cash outflows
leaving these other banks because why take a chance?
The game theory of it is move your money out
until this is over.
And if you're okay with moving it back in a few weeks,
if it turns out not to be around the bank, that's fine.
So a lot of this can be self-fulfilling. You have to remember that runs on the bank, free where you said this, 100 years ago,
works extremely common.
Every decade there would be a giant financial panic and there'd be a run on the bank, run on many banks.
And the only way that the federal government stopped it was by introducing fd i c and they said they said to depositors
your money is safe
and at that time two thousand dollars was enough
the problem we have is that with these business banks
two thousand dollars is not enough
so all of a sudden there's going to be a crisis of confidence if you think
a business bank can go under
again you're just gonna leave all these regional banks you're gonna go to
the top four that's gonna be it
so i i think that that the situation right now is really dynamic.
And if the Fed does nothing and just says,
up, these depositors should have known better.
The loss is on them.
Then I think the rational reaction for depositors
at all these other banks would be just to leave.
Because I don't think depositors
are in a good position to assess
the liquidity and credit worthiness of a bank.
I just don't think they are.
I think stockholders are.
There are the people who should lose all their money
if the bank goes under, but not depositors.
Any advice or takeaways for founders
and capital allocators going forward?
Obviously, have your money in multiple bank accounts.
I sent you guys a list that was just published of all of the funds that custody at SVB
and it's unbelievable the list. It's every single major VC in Silicon Valley.
Wow. Where'd you get this? I have my ways. Oh, it's directed from SEC filing. It's got it.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. This is amazing. Wow. Holy shit. I mean everybody's in there
100 Sequoia
We're going pretty fast here, but yeah,
Everyone did a fund. I mean, this is a lot of
I feel like I'm very fortunate that we were we were out
a few months ago when we were talking about venture debt on the pod.
I didn't believe that SVB should be in this business, so I told.
Well, look, there's craft.
There's craft.
No, well, hold on.
I'll tell you.
Does it say how much money we got in there?
Yeah, go to the right.
I'll tell you what happened is so after the conversation we had on this show about venture
debt, I'm like, I don't really like that SVB is in this business.
So I told my guys, step in and count somewhere else, so we did that. So we moved our firm accounts
over and we were just using SVB to make, you know, warehouse loans or whatever. So I thought
they were just a lender to us. So yesterday, when all this stuff went down, I said to our
guys, like, we're out of there, right? They're like, well, actually, we had about $45 million
that we were about to distribute to LPs. I'm like whoa that's crazy so we were
able to sweep that to an account we used to make in kind distributions and then we got on
the phone and we called as many portfolios as we could to get them out and we got a huge
number of them out but unfortunately some of them didn't get out. Here's the thing that
I think people in Washington don't understand we're doing this with the next set of banks. The triage is still happening.
Guys, I will tell you, look, Zach, I appreciate the the siren call, but I think the only way
that what you're saying, because you're saying that triggers the next siren call and the contagion
spreads. I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying it's a reality and you're right. The game theory
optimal way to play this as a depositor is to move your money out
and get it somewhere that it's completely safe. And you know, you have your cash secured or
buy a security in a brokerage account where it's totally safe and it's registered with
a security exchange or something. But in the meantime, for this to get resolved,
there has to be a bear hug solution offered up this weekend.
I'll say it again.
Yeah.
In order to stop the next set of siren calls to drive the next car.
Well, freeway next time.
I'm sorry.
Listen, this is the thing I hate about the run on the bank conversation is that if you
warn people that there's a possible run on the bank happening, you're actually creating
the run on the bank.
That's why it's so pernicious when these things get started. And yesterday, we were calling all of our
portfolio companies because we were warning them, because our obligation was to them, but
we weren't, you know, I don't think we were putting out like a siren to the world. And
by the afternoon, it was really clear that if they listened and got their money out,
they were in much better shape than ones who didn't listen. So this is the pernicious thing
is that
every individual actor has to do what's in their best interest
and we're not trying to start another run.
Sorry, what I'm holding on, but we know things.
We know that people very close to us big players
are withdrawing their money from other banks
right now.
I understand, but it's a caution.
So let me just finish my point.
My point is what you're saying makes a ton of sense.
And it's going to cause this, as you describe, kind of pernicious escalatory problem.
And the only way to stop it is a bear hug, which may not cost the taxpayer anything if the
fed or some federal agency stepped in and said, we are going to backstop all of these
banks with all of these deposits with cash. And we are going to backstop all of these banks
with all of these deposits with cash
and we're going to guarantee it today.
And here's a $500 billion facility.
And just by saying that everyone stops
trying to pull their money out
and you don't actually need to backstop it with any money.
It's already started.
So Nick, if you just the link that I sent you
in the group chat, can you just throw that link up there, I think this is the best proxy for what SACS is talking
about. So sort of, I think very unemotionally, how would we know that there is a contagion
that's a foot? You would look at the equity layer of all these regional banks. So what
is this? This is the eye shares regional banks ETF and what you start to see is this decay and
Go to the one week view Nick, please. It just starts to fall off of a cliff
And so why is this happening? Well, it's happening because the equity
Tear of these banks are now increasingly worried that their equity will get wiped out and so that's why they're selling
And so the I think what David said
is already a foot, unfortunately.
It starts at SVB, but forget the name for a second
and take Silicon Valley out of it.
This is a top 20 bank that now is in the receivership
of, you know, the authorities.
And so there does need to be something
that needs to happen in really short order
because what's to prevent bank number 35?
Let me just say it again. If a federal agency comes in, if the Fed comes in and says, you know what?
We are going to backstop all of these banks and we are going to put $500 billion behind it
and we're going to guarantee that all these deposits are going to be made whole.
It stops the panic. At that point, you don't even have to put up any money.
Because as soon as it's a first derivative problem, it's a feedback loop.
As soon as you stop people from doing the withdrawals, the whole market subsides, you don't
actually get to use it.
You unplug it.
And I think that's what needs to happen this weekend.
That's what you don't have to unplug it.
Today is the number one need to go get Silicon Valley bank, hand it over to a big balance
sheet and guarantee that balance sheet that they're going to make money by taking this
thing on.
And number two, they got to make a statement, we got another 500 billy for you.
Where's the president?
Where's Yaelin?
They'll make a profit on it too.
So I mean, they don't need to use any money to do it.
Right.
The thing that's missing in our system is that there's no FDIC for $25 million accounts.
Like $250 is not an effective amount for a business bank.
That's a personal account.
It's for a personal account.
But businesses need confidence in our economy
and our banking system,
or the whole thing starts to run spool.
So what the quid pro quo should be is,
you can get a 25 million FDIC business banking account,
and the bank is highly restricted
in what it can do with that money.
You can't put that money in Fagazee venture debt.
You can't put that money in laddered 10 year bonds
that don't get marked to market.
It's only highly liquid, secure,
marked to market assets.
And the downside of that for the bank
is they'll make less money and pass on,
less interest to the business, the depositor.
The shareholder.
But so what?
That's the way it should work.
How are stable coins looking like a better option right now?
I mean, the crypto guys right now are like, what is it?
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al.
They're not, Jake Al. They're not, Jake Al. They're not, Jake Al. They're not, Jake Al. They're not, Jake Al the reason for that, Jamal, is just that what we've seen
is that liquidity is all correlated.
So when people are panicking about the state of their finances
and worried about getting access to their cash,
the first thing they dump is crypto,
because it is very liquid.
So everyone is trying to free up cash right now.
I just want to be clear, as it ended the show here,
we were dancing around, is this going to be a contagion?
And I think what we know and what we're seeing is
the next dominoes are already falling.
And it's not the contagion.
It cannot be a contagion.
We have to stop it.
That's the point.
That's your feeling, and I agree with you.
But I just want to make sure people understand.
We started this, we didn't wanna go there.
You know, I think with some reticent retic to go in there. Let's put it this way. If you, if anybody, if you have initiated
a wire in the last 24 hours, you are worried about contagion. Yes.
If you're in DC and you have any ability, Matt, Matt, and if you have any ability to influence
what's going to happen this weekend, we strongly
advise on that. Someone comes in and bear hugs the market this weekend and says, we will
not let contagion happen with a very big slug of capital to support it that will likely
not even be needed to support it. Because once you say that, the contagion will stop.
We got a comment. Yeah. Freeberg, we're going to know on Monday,
whether these regulators and the administration
know what they're doing at all.
The other black swan problem is that this weekend,
we will find out what some of the unintended
second and third order consequences are going to be
of SVB being in a receivership this weekend.
We talked a little bit about the pipes problem,
but there may be several other businesses and other other institutions and companies that we don't know about that may trigger
another set of cascading effects that are unrelated to a banking problem, but could drive some
more significant business and economic problems that we're going to kind of probably end up
talking about next week. So, you know, this weekend we think-
The nervous system with payroll, but there are other things that does money goes towards uh... you know
mortgages or rents
so the cascading effect of this if people stop paying their rents if people
stop paying mortgages i mean
real estate
yeah i mean
i didn't visit a keyv instead of east palestine
yelling visit a keyv and said a slow-cut of allie do these people know what's
going on here come home they promise more financial assistance for Ukraine and they're saying they're monitoring the situation here
we're in the process of what the bill for you
for a
big
failure yeah
get on the
crane the bill for you crane this month versus this ball out is you know
probably the same so I think we have to really think this through folks
yeah you're gonna go well no on Monday with these people have a clue or not. No, they have to be on TV tonight or tomorrow. This has to be a pressure on Sunday. Hold on.
I think I think a lot of these guys do know what they're doing. So let me just say it to them
in language. They understand folks, when you look at the equity tier of these regional banks,
Folks, when you look at the equity tier of these regional banks, people are liquidating the equity tier because they know that that is the first domino to fall if banks go into
receivership.
Please act accordingly.
You can see it in the ETFs.
You can see it in the trade flows.
This is not a Silicon Valley problem anymore.
It is a regional bank problem and it will get worse
unless you do something to make it better.
Right. And Jake, I just used the word bail. I don't like that word because...
No, not a bailout. Backstop.
There were two big to fail banks in 2008 in the financial crisis who did get bailed
out. Those people should have lost the value of their stock. Okay, that was wrong. That's
what we're talking about here. The POPB is wiped out already. What we're talking about is protecting depositors.
These are people who trusted that when they put their money in a top 20 bank that our
regulatory system is compliant, that they will not lose their money. When it says on their
computer screen, that my money isn't a black rock or a Morgan Stanley mutual fund or money
market fund, rather rather the safest instrument
there is that that money is where it's supposed to be.
And if regulators allow that bank to put their money in stupid assets that are not marked
to market and that's why they shut down that is not a good reason for depositors to not
get their money.
100%
We're taking care of depositors here and not bailing out stockholders.
Yes, this is not for the executives at the banks.
It's for the depositors who did nothing wrong and nor did their employees and their customers
and the innovation that they're working on.
All right, this has been a great all-in podcast.
Sorry, we didn't have time to talk about the shaman, QAnon shaman.
I know that's a passion project for Hugh Sacks, but you can announce your Kickstarter
for him and you'll go find me for the Hugh Sachs.
For you to show them.
For you to show them.
But where's the bulldog?
We're giving that bulldog one more time.
The shaman is an intersection of three
of a very interesting Venn diagram.
He is very athletically fit, incredibly hairy,
and oddness attitude.
That's a trifecta that you rarely see that.
And also cultural appropriation.
So yeah, we have to keep that in mind
and conspiracy theories.
I mean, this guy's got it all.
Are we gonna play poker this week at a just,
like as the meager is kind of sad.
He's kind of an ob, the seriously the shaman,
what's his name is? Jake, he doesn't seem like he's kind of he's kind of an odd that that's seriously the the shaman what's his name is uh
Jake uh he doesn't seem like he's all that sure yeah no he's he's a guy who has diagnosed mental illness
but he's completely nonviolent he's completely nonviolent he actually believes in the
philosophy of mahogany of no violence towards any creatures he's a bit sharing yeah he you know
he's a bit of an odd duck and freeberg of q-node
and he didn't assault anyone he did what is wanted to the capital apparently
getting a tour
uh... from police officers were just guiding him through it is the
generous for years
almost like he got four years in jail for that because he became the face
of an insurrection because he just looks so
weird with the viking horns and the face pain whatever you also made
threats to politicians politicians too,
but yeah, I mean, it does seem like it might not be
the appropriate sentence.
He wrote a note saying we're coming for you, I think on,
you have to look into the case,
but he was sentenced by a Republican judge from Texas
and he had made threats, written threats
and put them on the desks of folks.
And he was one of the first people into the building,
so I think they got him for that,
but I agree with you. Listen, if you can pass, how we got into the building. So I think they got him for that, but I agree with you.
There is a comparison.
Listen, if you pass the building,
if he didn't break a door down
or didn't smash a window,
if he damaged property, that's one thing.
If he assaulted someone, that's one thing,
but he just wandered through the Capitol,
I think four years is kind of excessive.
And I think the reason why the guy got four years
is because of his mental illness,
he's not able to defend himself the way that he should be.
This is just a fundamental, simple liberties issue.
If you have any compassion at all, you shouldn't let a guy like that get scapegoated.
There's 400 people who, of the thousands of people who broke in, who were violent and who
got sentences of some degree.
They were all settled, like a plea bargain, including his.
They didn't go to trial.
And if, you know, I think we can all agree, the violence that occurred that day is, you
know, should be punished.
And the non-violent stuff should be at speeding ticket, you know, and we don't need to.
I think three categories, Jason.
I think violence, the assault on cops, or so forth, punished.
Yeah.
Full extent of law.
Yeah.
Then damage of property and then, but the people who are just people who just trespassed
or wandered through who may
not even have known they were trespassing.
Probeciation.
That's not jail time.
That's not a felony.
Yeah.
I mean, we want to promote peaceful protests.
If they had come with guitars and sang kumbaya and we shall overcome, we'd be having a different
discussion here instead.
They beat cops.
You know, and you can't beat cops up.
Sorry.
Those ones go to jail.
Yeah. Period. Full stop.
We're in agreement.
Okay, everybody, it's been another amazing all-in-podcast.
Sorry we couldn't get to all the news, but we felt that this required a big unpacking for
the Sultan of Science, the dictator, and the rainman, IMD, undisputed, world's greatest
moderate.
We'll see you next time on the oil and podcast this week I'm going to be West, I'm going to be Queen of King of Law I'm going to be Queen of King of Law I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
Besties are gone
I'm going to be Queen of King of Law
Besties are gone
Besties are gone Besties are gone I just have one big hug or something because they're all like this like sexual tension, but we just need to release that out then
What your the beat
What your
Here a beat
Beat what
We need to get mercy
I'm doing all this
I'm doing all this
I'm doing all it.