Christopher Moltisanti Explains the Banking Crisis

It’s called SVB, Ton. It’s just short for Silicon Valley Bank but these tech bros love to make everything into an acronym. Long story short, the bank made some very stupid decisions and trusted the wrong people to vouch for them. Now? Well, let’s just say me and Paulie don’t need to head out to the Pine Barrens to go searching for what remains of the bank, capisce?

See, what the bank did was set itself up as a flashy spot for all these startup founders and venture capitalist firms. Venture capitalists, fucking VCs they like to call themselves, basically do what we did with Davey Scatino and his sports store. Startups need money to do business, the VC jerkoffs give ‘em the money, sometimes it pays off, sometimes they’re up shit creek. 

So, this SVB bank starts rolling out the red carpet for all these VC schmucks and startup assholes. It makes the Executive Game we run with Frank Jr. look like child’s play, Ton. They ran it a lot like this thing of ours, too. Told all their customers if they wanted loans for their flying car delivery service or internet interior decorator or whatever the shit, that they were gonna need to bank with SVB too. They had ‘em by the balls without the poor fucks ever even realizing it. 

These banks though, they’re always looking for a skim. So they took all this money that they were raking in and started buying up long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities from the government. To their credit, it was a pretty fucking solid move. It’d be like freezing a bunch of Carm’s ziti knowing you were gonna eat it later when she’s outta town – more or less a sure bet at a good return later in life. Problem is, T, they didn’t invest in anything else. They didn’t put money into the Esplanade. They didn’t kick in for the crate of smuggled Vespas, may we find them someday of course. They don’t even got a Bing, T!

Everything was basically fine, but the SVB fucks were cutting it close by not having a more diverse array of products on their hands, but there wasn’t anything to be worried about. Until interest rates on the frozen ziti took off. See, they’d bought those frozen zitis when it was cheap to do so but they didn’t account for one thing – inflation. You got any idea how much my Maserati I bought of Johnny Sacs is worth now? Double! The fucking prices, T, madone. So the government basically pulled a Carmine and raised interest rates to whack inflation down which left SVB with a bunch of assets on their books that weren’t worth what they said they were.

This is where things get seriously fucked, T. A group of influential tech douchebags and startup assholes started to get spooked that they wouldn’t be able to get access to their scherrol. SVB sold a shit ton of their frozen ziti at a loss to make sure they had the coin to give out should people come asking for it. They tried to settle everyone down and let ‘em know that things were fine and there was no need to take all their money out. Turns out the tech douchebags and startup assholes are a lot like Phil Leotardo and do whatever the fuck they want despite very clear parameters on who’s acting boss.

They took all their money out and SVB was screwed. The government basically had a sit down with all interested parties and decided SVB weren’t good earners and took their fucking business right out from under them. Some real gangster shit, T. Unfortunately, it leaves all the regular civilians who banked there feeling worse than Adriana with a particularly bad bout of the IBS. She’s gonna go see that doc you recommended, T, thanks for that. 

Anyways, because banks gotta pay fees to insure their assets, it seems like everyone is gonna get their money back. Which is more than we can say for some of these rat bastards we front money to despite the six or seven points we tack on. These finance squares are ruthless cats, Ton, we could learn a thing or two from how they do business. But you wanna know what the worst part is, T? Now, no fucking ziti!