Unanswered Questions

TPM Reader EG notes a post from our friend Barry Ritholtz in which he notes ten questions or current unknowns about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. You can find them here. As Barry points out, if past financial crises are any guide, we currently — that is to say, in real time — have only a very limited understanding of just what happened here and why. Presumably decision-makers at the Fed and FDIC had substantially more information that was the basis of the decisions they made on Sunday. But their understanding is almost certainly limited too. Check his post out. Often a knowledgable set of questions is far more illuminating than opinion and assertion in advance of any real understanding and context.

A few general observations.