The thing about a run on the bank...

An interesting thing about the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank is that it's not due to bad investments. It's actually mostly psychological.

SVB didn't invest in fundamentally unsound investments. These weren't complex and dishonestly mis-rated mortgage backed securities, like what screwed up banks in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. These were treasury bonds, an investment that's considered safe and conservative. There's no "What's this really worth?" mystery as bonds are priced in transparent, highly liquid markets throughout the day. When the agency behind them makes a change it holds a press conference.

SVB also didn't lose a ton of money on these investments. The loss was, like, 2% of SVB's total assets.

People argue whether SVB's mistake was having that 2% loss. Yes, they could have done better. But really their big mistake was communicating the loss. They were too loud about it!

You see, a run on the bank happens when there's a loss of confidence. A few depositors withdraw their money and announce they did it because they think the bank's in danger. This spooks other depositors, who withdraw their money, too. Soon the bank has to sell of assets to pay out these withdrawals— because, remember, banks don't just have everyone's money sitting in cash in a vault. That triggers further fears, triggering further withdrawals. It becomes a vicious downward cycle.

A fear cycle is exactly what killed SVB. They helped trigger it by being too transparent about suffering that 2% loss. The CEO basically went on social media about it. That alerted a few big-money depositors, who (a) withdrew their money and (b) also posted on social media about it.

The fact the run on the bank spread through social media is a huge part of how it happened in the space of a day. Years ago, like back in the Great Depression, a run on the bank happened when people lined up at brick-and-mortar bank offices to demand cash from tellers. In 2023 a run on the bank happens when people use an app to transfer $25,000,000 and then tweet it.

Fuck St. Patrick's Day. Still.

A few years ago I declared Fuck St. Patrick's Day. My thoughts haven't changed with the passing of a few years. Fuck St. Patrick's Day, still.

I have absolutely nothing against Irish people or Irish culture. I come from Irish ancestry. I grew up celebrating St. Patrick's Day every year, often with a trip to my Irish-American grandmother's house. My beef is with St. Patrick's Day— more specifically, with how popular culture recognizes the day. It's all about the booze.

I also have nothing against booze. I enjoy drinking! I drink modest portions at least a few times a week. What I don't like is seeing the culture of my forebears reduced to, and commercially packaged as, guzzling appropriately named or colored alcohol.

What's ironic about the Irish = alcohol shorthand is that my grandmother, the most Irish living person in my family, who sang old folks songs in Gaelic, was an abstainer. She didn't drink a drop of alcohol, and she had a firm rule that no alcohol would be brought into the house.

My dad told me amusing stories about how his dad would get Christmas gifts of bottles of whiskey from his colleagues and he'd give them back (along with an explanation). "What else can I get you?" his colleagues would ask. "How about a hat. Or a wristwatch," Grandpa would answer. I always thought this was one of those be-good types of stories parents tell their children... until one day in my teens we were over at Grandma's house and Dad found an old cardboard box in the eaves absolutely full of old wristwatches! 🤣

Grandma was no Carrie Nation about alcohol. She never campaigned for Prohibition. She didn't even say unkind things about people who drank— including a few among her grandchildren who had (or still have!) drinking problems and made messes of their lives. It was just a house rule for her, no alcohol here. As a person growing up in a community that had long been treated as second-class citizens (historically by the British in Ireland; in her own lifetime by other Whites in America who looked down on the Irish) she'd seen alcohol ruin enough lives that she wouldn't allow a drop of it inside.

Kevin's Not-so-Korean Beef

On a Costco shopping trip a few weeks ago we picked up a package of Kevin's Korean BBQ-Style.



Our experience with heat-and-eat packaged foods at Costco has been mixed. A few are genuine hits, items that we buy again and again. Most are "enh".... They're edible, but not enjoyable enough, or not good enough in terms of quality-price ratio (QPR), that we'd ever buy them again.

We bought this package of bulgogi because (a) we haven't had it before and were curious to try it, and (b) we like bulgogi. I've traveled to Korea numerous times and always enjoyed the barbecued meats there— bulgogi, bulkalbi, etc. We've enjoyed numerous Korean restaurants in the SF Bay Area. And I've made the dishes myself at home from scratch, including making the meat marinade/sauce from scratch as well as from bottled sauces. Oh, and (c) this was on sale, $5 off. 😅

I can make a decent Korean beef dish from scratch. It's not restaurant quality, but it's good enough that you know what it is. I hoped buying a package would yield at least as good results with less effort.



Inside the package are 4 sealed envelopes. Two are precooked meat, sous vide style; two are sauce.

Above I mentioned QPR.... I was disappointed to find that this package marked "32 oz." contained maybe 20 oz. of actual meat. (The scale shows 22.36 oz. but those plastic envelopes weigh almost a full ounce, then there's all the cooking fluid packaged in with them.) For the full price of $19 per package this is already looking like a poor QPR.



Because the meat is already precooked, preparation is just a matter of draining the meat, briefly searing it in a skillet, and tossing it with the sauce. I used just one of the two sauce packets as it seemed like both would make it overly saucy. Also, the sauce is sweet; adding both packets would make the dish overly sweet. I garnished the meat with sesame seeds before serving.



I wasn't feeling like going full Korean with dinner the other night so I made mashed potatoes and green beans to go with the meat. That very non-Korean pairing turned out to be fine as Kevin's Korean BBQ-Style Meat is not very Korean, either. The flavor is way too sweet, even with only half the sauce used. And sweetness is practically the only dimension of the flavor. There are no real notes of garlic, onion, or ginger. It might pass muster for "Korean" food in Iowa.

Even worse, the meat isn't good quality. It's tough and stringy. In Korea, a good barbecue restaurant is basically a butcher shop with stoves. People go there not just because the sauce and preparation are good, but because the meat itself is fundamentally good.

I finished off the meat from Kevin's because it wasn't bad enough to want to trash, but it's nowhere near good enough to buy again.