Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

Re:Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024) by eru on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @08:47PM (#46536056)

> In situations where we still care about dollars, so no hyperinflation or total collapse of the United States, the current market value of a Treasury bond can't actually vary that much. And the amount it can reasonably vary is mostly proportional to how many years are left in the bond.

Well, it was enough variance to bring Silicon Valley Bank down.

> By the time your bonds reach maturity, you always have more dollars than you started with. Long term you always profit.

I'd be very happy to have you as my investor in some long term bonds---with terrible below-market-but-barely-positive interest rates.

> I'm saying you're too worried about "withdrawal requests" a normal bank would see.

Silicon Valley Bank saw massive withdrawals, because their liabilities exceeded their assets.

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Re:Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024) by Dylan16807 on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @09:29PM (#46536433)

Again, worrying about the long term value is an entirely different problem from worrying about your assets temporarily shrinking 10%. I was talking about the former. SVB, an example of the latter, does not affect my argument. And again, SVB could have used shorter term bonds to avoid that problem.

> I'd be very happy to have you as my investor in some long term bonds---with terrible below-market-but-barely-positive interest rates.

Very funny. Look, that's one feature of Treasury bonds, not the only feature. They get pretty good yields compared to gold in the long term, and you can trust them a lot.

[ Parent | on HN ]