1. The government stepped in to protect all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, even though only deposits up to $250,000 are insured and allowing big depositors to take a haircut wouldn't have created a systemic crisis.
2. The bailout of Silicon Valley Bank raises concerns about moral hazard and whether it will encourage future bad behavior by businesses that placed large sums with the bank without asking whether it was sound.
3. The lesson from Silicon Valley Bank is that banks need to be strongly regulated whether or not their deposits are insured, and following this wisdom should prevent more bailouts.
The article "Opinion | How Bad Was the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout?" by Paul Krugman in The New York Times discusses the recent bailout of Silicon Valley Bank (S.V.B.) and raises concerns about moral hazard. While the author acknowledges the logic behind the bailout, they express discomfort with the fact that it was a bailout and that it may encourage future bad behavior.
One potential bias in this article is that it focuses solely on the negative aspects of the bailout and does not explore any potential benefits or positive outcomes. For example, while the author notes that depositors who placed large sums with S.V.B. without asking whether the bank was sound are paying no price, they do not consider how this bailout may have prevented a wider financial crisis or protected innocent depositors who were unaware of S.V.B.'s risky strategy.
Additionally, the article makes unsupported claims about S.V.B.'s depositors' understanding of banking and their motivations for placing funds with the bank. The author suggests that these depositors did not understand how banking works and were not making careful, rational calculations about risks and likely policy responses. However, there is no evidence presented to support this claim.
Furthermore, while discussing moral hazard in banking, the article fails to acknowledge that regulations already exist to mitigate this risk. The author briefly mentions capital requirements but does not explore other regulatory measures such as stress tests or limits on risky investments.
Overall, while raising valid concerns about moral hazard in banking and questioning the fairness of bailouts, this article presents a one-sided view of the issue without fully exploring potential counterarguments or acknowledging existing regulatory measures.