Two of the most influential men in Silicon Valley join me to discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and what the government should do in the wake of the financial crisis. David Sachs and Vivek Ramaswamy have been going back and forth in heated Twitter exchanges that are atypical for both of them, and they have agreed to come on the show today to hash it out.
00:00:00.500Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.920Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live from Montana.
00:00:17.220Happy Monday. We have an extraordinary show for you today. This is a must listen.
00:00:23.060As The Wall Street Journal put it this morning, the U.S. banking system is under siege.
00:00:27.140And we have two of the top voices in Silicon Valley with opposing views, and how, on what to do about it.
00:00:34.440David Sachs and Vivek Ramaswamy are both here to have a discussion and debate regarding the fallout from the collapse of the nation's 16th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank.
00:00:46.400David argues it's right for the federal government to step in and protect depositors.
00:00:50.960Vivek says the bank does not deserve it and we are looking at a moral hazard here.
00:00:55.300The pair have been going back and forth in heated Twitter exchanges, I would say, that are atypical for both men.
00:01:02.620And they have agreed to come on this show today to hash out their arguments.
00:01:06.680This is a discussion you will not hear anywhere else, and you cannot miss on a day like this.
00:01:11.720You will emerge smarter than everyone else you know on this particular topic.
00:01:15.460Here are just some of the latest headlines on this story.
00:01:19.100Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announcing last night that Silicon Valley Bank's uninsured depositors would gain access to their deposits this morning.
00:01:28.200And President Biden saying, quote, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe.
00:01:33.540But now, hours into the trading day, several regional bank stocks have been halted.
00:01:39.500The trading of those stocks has been halted amid fallout from the collapse.
00:01:43.820So clearly there is something closing in on panic with respect to some of these smaller banks.
00:01:50.540First Republic Bank was down over 70 percent at one point.
00:01:54.360Meanwhile, on the larger bank side, Charles Schwab is seeking to reassure its investors and customers that it is well positioned during what has been a volatile trading day already.
00:02:05.220Charles Schwab is the eighth largest bank in the country.
00:02:08.380It saw its stock price drop as much as 20 percent in early Monday trades.
00:02:12.820We're going to cover it all the good, the bad, how it affects you and your money in your bank and your paycheck, because this could affect people in various different streams, depending on how it goes.
00:02:24.880David Sachs, founder and general partner of venture capital firm Kraft Ventures and co-host of the All In podcast.
00:02:32.480And Vivek Ramaswamy is a Republican presidential candidate, declared, and founder of Strive Asset Management.
00:02:38.560Vivek, after he went to Yale Law School, made all of his money in biotech and is now turning to politics, as I mentioned.
00:02:48.360You guys have been snarking at each other and fighting online.
00:02:50.620But I understand it's you know, this this whole thing brings up strong feelings and not just for you guys.
00:02:55.760Right. For the average consumer and taxpayer out there who worries about their their balance sheet and their bank and so on, too.
00:03:01.860So thank you for the spirit of debate and for agreeing to come on and hash it out here.
00:03:05.340All right. So, David, let me start with you.
00:03:06.640So most people going about their lives, they have no idea what Silicon Valley Bank is.
00:03:10.440Sixteenth largest bank. And this is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.
00:03:15.580So it's a big deal. But this is like sort of a weird bank.
00:03:18.700It's like a tech bank that all of you and your people out there used a lot.
00:03:23.160Probably, you know, people in my industry less so.
00:03:26.540So explain how it sort of found itself in this position.
00:03:29.020Yeah, well, I think this story really actually started about a week before you saw SVB go into receivership on Friday with the testimony of the FDIC chair who acknowledged or admitted that U.S. banks had something like six hundred twenty billion dollars of unrealized losses, not an exotic instruments like derivatives, but on simple, mundane T bills and mortgage bonds.
00:03:54.880This was a result of the spike in interest rates.
00:03:58.220Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm jumping in. I'm jumping in.
00:04:00.800Yeah. Hold on. I'm jumping in because I want to keep it one on one.
00:04:04.180You can talk five of one, but I'll just be the annoying one on one or just to keep everybody up to speed because not everybody knows everything that you know about like banking and trading.
00:04:12.100So you're basically saying unrealized losses. Basically, a lot of these banks invested in things like treasury bonds at when interest rates were really low.
00:04:19.760And as the Fed kept hiking up interest rates, that those investments were basically becoming devalued and you didn't actually lose any value unless you're forced to sell the treasury bonds and these banks.
00:04:30.440So it's unrealized. You have a loss on the on paper, but you don't have it in real life until you actually have to sell it.
00:04:35.460So you're saying a lot of these banks had unrealized losses, which are scary, but only actually impact you if you have to sell the bonds.
00:04:42.380Go ahead. Right. I think that's very well said.
00:04:44.940But the thing to understand is even though the losses may be unrealized, the value of those bonds has gone down because the value of bonds moves in the opposite direction of interest rates.
00:04:52.640And as we know, interest rates have spiked over the last year in a way that we haven't seen in decades because we're dealing with the worst inflation in 40 years.
00:05:01.860This leads us to SVB. They had about 80 billion dollars of mortgage bonds, even though they're a startup bank.
00:05:08.320They serve Silicon Valley. I think it's important to understand that they got in trouble not because of some sort of risky startup behavior.
00:05:14.940They got in trouble because they basically bought a bunch of mundane, boring mortgage bonds and the value of those bonds got decimated over the last year.
00:05:25.540And their capital basically got to the point where they needed to do they basically need to raise emergency capital.
00:05:32.420And when they announced that they were going to have to do a stock issuance, the hedge funds got a hold of this.
00:05:37.820Their share price basically tanked. And then a run on the bank started on Thursday.
00:05:41.980People basically began to worry that it was insolvent.
00:05:44.420And then on Friday, the Fed stepped in and took it into receivership.
00:05:49.820And that was the start of this crisis.
00:05:51.260But if you look at what's going on now in the stock market today on Monday, this is a much bigger problem than Silicon Valley Bank.
00:05:59.160You're seeing now trading was halted this morning in roughly half a dozen major, major regional banks.
00:06:07.360The the interest, the bond market now has rallied significantly.
00:06:11.760It is betting that the Fed will now have to cut interest rates because banks are in trouble.
00:06:17.580And so, you know, I wish this was just a story about SVB and Silicon Valley Bank, but it's a much bigger story than that.
00:06:24.500And this is where I took issue with Vivek's take on this is that he basically said this was a Silicon Valley problem.
00:06:32.440We shouldn't bail them out. We shouldn't worry about it. This is no systemic risk.
00:06:36.700And two hours after he wrote that piece in The Wall Street Journal, Signature Bank in New York was seized by regulators.
00:06:42.900There was a run on the bank that started on Friday.
00:06:44.600And now we see this huge problem in all these other banks on Monday.
00:06:48.540So this is where I fundamentally disagree with Vivek.
00:06:51.760I think that we probably share a lot of views in common about a lot of things, including where SVB mismanaged its finances, because certainly they did a bad job.
00:07:00.640But this is a much larger issue because of the the fact that the Fed has slammed on the brakes after basically running the American economy at 150 miles an hour.
00:07:11.760So that is the wreckage we are starting to see right now.
00:07:14.560And we can talk about SVB, but we should also talk about the larger problem in this economy.
00:07:18.380We're definitely going to get to all of that.
00:07:20.320And Vivek, before you respond, just to add some some more meat on the bones of the background, because I didn't know anything about this prior to this story breaking on Friday.
00:07:30.100So tech kind of has its own bank and it's this bank.
00:07:32.820And yes, they invested in all these so-called safe government bonds like these treasuries and these mortgage backed securities with the low interest rates.
00:07:40.080But I know you've been pointing out the those interest rates going back up was foreseeable and other other banks foresaw it and hedged their investment portfolios accordingly.
00:07:48.160You know, SVB did not, which is one of the questions you've been raising about whether they deserve they deserve help.
00:07:54.220So they were living large for a long period during the tech bubble, 2021, post pandemic, during pandemic, all these tech companies did so well.
00:08:04.580They were in the bubble and then post the bubble, like it's been popping in tech before it popped anyplace else.
00:08:10.900Not only have those have those companies been doing less well and their deposits into Silicon Valley Bank have been going down and they need to withdraw more to cover payroll and things like that.
00:08:21.920So SVB's coffers are less full, but then the Fed steps in, starts hiking up the interest rates.
00:08:27.260So the value of their portfolio, the SVB's overall is going down.
00:10:58.180It's like an $8 billion some odd public company, something like that.
00:11:00.700Had close to half a billion dollar balance on balance with Silicon Valley Bank itself without diversifying.
00:11:06.740And I just think one of the things that we're doing here is rewarding that bad behavior by saying that even though you didn't do your diligence, even though you weren't exercising financial, basic financial discipline, we're still going to reward that anyway.
00:11:17.800And then the dirty little secret here, Megan, is that Silicon Valley Bank and also all the people around it, but Silicon Valley Bank included, lobbied for years for lower capital requirements and lower risk requirements on the express thesis that they were not systemically important.
00:11:34.580It means they're saying we're never, we're not never going to be important enough for the federal government to step in and save us and treat us any differently anyway.
00:11:42.720That's why we get to take greater risk.
00:11:45.180That's why perhaps they didn't even want to engage in interest rate hedging, though any other professional bank would have done it.
00:11:50.100And yet in their hour of need, what does everyone in and around Silicon Valley argue?
00:11:55.060They argue the bank run thesis that it is indeed systemically important.
00:11:58.240And I just think that's hypocritical and it's a problem.
00:12:00.360And I think we've got to separate this question of how we would have handled Silicon Valley Bank, which is the bigger of the two, significantly bigger in scale than Signature Bank and also came first and also it's worth talking about.
00:12:11.540Silicon Valley Bank versus how we want to handle a bank run on the rest of the banks across the country.
00:12:16.780So I think that there's a way to separate this.
00:12:18.620In my Wall Street Journal op-ed running in print today, I separate the two.
00:12:21.980If you want to raise the FDIC deposit insurance maximum above $250,000 for everybody, that's a reasonable conversation to have.
00:12:28.880The Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort to all banks in this country.
00:12:35.320But I think it really sows well-founded mistrust when you change the rules on a whim, on the fly, after the fact, for whichever darlings might be the greatest favorites.
00:12:45.320And the arguments I heard over the weekend were really, I think, discouraging to me all the way from one end of the spectrum saying that, no, no, no.
00:12:51.320These are America's entrepreneurs, the chosen class, the special ones driving the American economy.
00:12:57.060I mean, the number of calls I got, I mean, people throwing spaghetti against the wall, that's one argument to compete against China.
00:13:02.160I think that actually captures the essential intuition here is that these are the people who deserve to be saved, even if they are playing by a different set of rules than everybody else.
00:13:09.220Two, then saying there's going to be a bank run across the rest of America, when, in fact, if that's really the case, you could handle that in a lot of different ways than just bailing out a bunch of tech startups who are banking with Silicon Valley Bank.
00:13:20.920And I think this is just going to incentivize more of that.
00:13:23.660Let me explain what, let me explain this, the quote unquote bailout that's actually happened.
00:13:27.740So what happened was on Friday, the FDIC assumed control of the bank.
00:13:32.800The management was removed after this $42 billion is withdrawn.
00:13:36.480And he's the CEO is up there saying, Greg Becker, stay calm, stay calm, as you point out, not calming in any way.
00:13:46.140Then they announced the Treasury, the Fed, the FDIC announced no losses associated with the resolution of this problem.
00:13:52.260The Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayers.
00:13:55.640They now announced late last night they are stepping in to save the feds are stepping in to save this bank, essentially, but not with taxpayer dough.
00:14:03.440They say they're going to tap into the FDIC insurance fund made up of premiums paid by banks, not by taxpayers, that they will then replenish that fund with a, quote, special assessment, not on taxpayers, but on banks.
00:14:20.620And so that's supposed to make the taxpayers feel better that we're not paying for.
00:14:24.080I mean, my general philosophy is we always pay in the end.
00:14:26.960The bank customer always pays in the end.
00:14:28.580Why would the banks just suck it up and not pass it along to the customers however they could eventually?
00:14:34.880The regulars, meantime, are seeking a white knight.
00:14:37.680They want somebody to step in and buy the bank and its assets.
00:14:41.100HSBC, another bank, bought at least the UK version arm of SBB for one pound.
00:14:47.820But so far, no takers on the American end.
00:14:51.220And that's where we are now with the feds in control, assuring us, David, that we are not going to pay for this.
00:14:57.500But before we get to that, can you speak to some of Vivek's points about how, oh, this is just the special class.
00:15:03.160And they told us all along that they weren't supposed to be essential.
00:15:06.680And that's why they were allowed to proceed under this sort of loosely regulated scheme as opposed to that imposed by Dodd-Frank, which everybody else had to do after the 08 crash.
00:15:16.700Well, OK, let me start with a couple of points where I agree with Vivek, and I'll go to the points where I disagree.
00:15:21.620So the part where I agree is that the management of SVB did not do a good job managing their risk.
00:16:03.840These are companies that have to run payroll on Wednesday.
00:16:07.180If they didn't get access to their money today, as the Fed provided, they would be furloughing and firing employees.
00:16:13.020They have employees all over the country.
00:16:15.060They have customers all over the country.
00:16:16.620There was a CEO of one of their customers who lives in Columbus, Ohio.
00:16:21.460And she says she drives a Honda and basically took on a second mortgage to help fund her startup of 15 people.
00:16:26.900So I think it's a gross simplification here just to say these are a bunch of rich tech fat cats who are going to get hurt or a bunch of VCs who are going to get hurt by this.
00:16:35.440This is basically 40,000 small businesses.
00:16:37.320And I think they need to be protected.
00:16:39.460I think this position of basically to screw them, I think that is untenable and will lead the Republican Party to ruin.
00:16:46.340The fact of the matter is that these small businesses can't – they don't have visibility into the balance sheet of these banks.
00:16:54.320They can't make an educated decision here about how risky the bank is.
00:16:57.900Well, but you know whether you have over 250,000 in the bank.
00:17:00.860We all know whether we have over – we all know.
00:17:03.560If the IC insures up to 250,000, that's it.
00:17:06.440Beyond that, you're taking your own risks.
00:17:07.640I have companies that were using SVB for business banking, and they had more than 250,000 in there, and they sweep that money into a money market fund.
00:17:18.900But that money market fund was basically custody by SVB, and they could not get access to their money.
00:17:23.700So are you telling me that when they log into their account at SVB and it says that their money is safe in a Morgan Stanley or BlackRock money market fund?
00:17:40.040Is that the position of the Republican Party?
00:17:43.120Is that small businesses all over the country – and if you do this for SVB, you're talking about doing it for Signature Bank, and you're talking about doing the next half dozen banks, that basically there's a run on them right now.
00:17:52.560Their stocks are being – we're tanking and are being frozen.
00:17:56.340So, David, I think I want to say a couple things here because I do – this worker pontification did bother me over the weekend where actually people are just using the idea of workers.
00:18:05.700Suddenly Silicon Valley tech startups with uncapped upside, the business plans of multi-trillion dollar companies are now reclassified as small businesses with workers.
00:18:13.120Let's talk about that for a second, okay?
00:18:14.920Most of these are venture-backed tech companies banking with Silicon Valley bank, okay?
00:18:19.460Now, they have uncapped equity upside that taxpayers that indirectly bear the cost of this, and they do, did not enjoy.
00:18:27.880You and I know this well, so let's not play this game where, you know what?
00:18:31.320The investors in these businesses, it would be a very painful thing to do.
00:18:35.400But if you made a mistake as the management team, the business model of every one of those tech companies is the same today as it was last week and as it was last month.
00:18:44.180So if those business models are really viable, there's capital that those investors, frankly, people like you, can be putting into those same portfolio companies.
00:18:55.440It involves added capital off a venture firm's balance sheet.
00:18:58.220The founders are going to make less money when their stock goes up.
00:19:01.380And that's part of the consequence and part of the bargain of capitalism is when you make a bad risk management decision by putting way too much money in one bank.
00:19:08.860Even if your business model continues to hold, you personally are going to make less money because you had to actually raise capital to make up for the hole that you created on your balance sheet.
00:19:19.400Now, I think this pontification of the worker to say that this is about, now it's not tech startups, let's call them small businesses, and then it's really about the workers, is really actually a myth to actually protect people just from equity dilution.
00:19:29.940And here's the other thing on that point.
00:19:31.520Many people, and you know this well too, who did business with Silicon Valley Bank, had special arrangements with Silicon Valley Bank.
00:19:37.460Now, you and I share in common the fact that venture debt is usually a bad idea for a startup.
00:19:42.080But nonetheless, Silicon Valley Bank did provide venture debt to a lot of these startups, which allows those founders and CEOs to own greater ownership percentage in their firms.
00:19:51.060The taxpayers directly or directly don't participate in that.
00:19:59.260So listen, I understand that tech startups are a convenient punching bag right now for a political candidate, but we need to be specific about what these companies did wrong.
00:20:12.040They didn't manage their business in a risky way.
00:20:14.220They did what every other small business in the country would do, which is open a bank account.
00:20:18.420And you want to tell them, you want to act like it's a moral hazard, if we don't make them responsible, if they don't lose all their deposits, they didn't make risky investments here.