Rami's Readings #13

SVB, Banking Turmoil, ChatGPT Plugins, RIP DPReview and Gordon Moore, 早安, 打工人, SuperPigs, AI Papers, and more.

Mar 26, 2023

Welcome to Rami’s Readings #13 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.

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💼 Business Reads - Follow up on SVB

It is time to do a short follow-up on the banking industry. As I said in #11, the contagion risk is not zero. Unfortunately, we are in for further turmoil. Credit Suisse was on the brink before its “acquisition” by UBS. First Republic is not out of the woods yet. Alex Tabarrok and Matt Levine rightly point out a speed mismatch between depositors and traders panicking and regulators coming in to keep calm or shore up a bank. Deutsche Bank credit default swaps rose on Friday - not good. We are living with information moving at Internet speed, and it feels like neither the banking industry nor regulators have adapted to this speed.

Molly White

wrote a fantastic newsletter about VCs and SVB. Read it.

Rest of World covered the impacts of the SVB collapse on startups outside the US. I highly recommend the read. Immigrant founders already have a hard time opening bank accounts and lines of credit in the US. It is practically only possible to move your money in time if you are physically in the US while your bank collapses. I challenge any of you to open a bank account online within a day, even with a social security number. Case in point, I recently tried to open a checking account with Wells Fargo as a test, and I never got past the application pending status… two weeks went by, no update. To make matters worse, I already have a credit card with them (admittedly not out of choice), so I need help understanding how. Imagine you are in a different time zone without a valid US ID, and your money is in SVB. Non-US founders faced these exact dire circumstances. Horrible.

On a side note, I mentioned in #11 that I have multiple bank accounts to protect my cash assets while still being accessible through retail banking. A reader asked me, what about my stock portfolio? Brokerage accounts benefit from a similar coverage to FDIC, called SIPC. SIPC covers up to $500k in investable assets, but your brokerage may already insure your assets to a higher amount. My brokerage of choice (Fidelity) purchases additional insurance from Lloyd’s of London such that there is no customer dollar limit on the coverage of securities. I am not worried.

Amazon Layoffs Will Shut Down Camera Review Site DPReview After 25 Years

Notes: As an amateur photographer, I am disappointed by Amazon. DPReview is my go-to for the latest camera news and reviews. Their attention to detail and extensive analysis is something that I will dearly miss.

One unexpected casualty: Digital Photography Review, also known as DPReview, is losing its entire editorial staff, and the site will stop publishing on April 10. Founded in November 1998, DPReview is one of the few active review sites as old as Ars Technica.