 Hey everyone, this is Dan. Let's talk about what's happening with the Silicon Valley Bank. The news came out today that Silicon Valley Bank, stock symbol SIVB, has been shut down by the bank regulator of the state of California. SVB was founded in 1983. It ranked as the 16th largest bank in the United States. SVB offers business lending products such as loans to help finance acquisitions of projects. The bank also provides private banking services and other financial products. Today, Friday, March 10, 2023, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation announced that it has taken possession of SVB because of, quote, inadequate liquidity and insolvency, unquote. Why did the bank fail? On March 8, SVB said it was selling almost all of its available for sale securities, which were $21 billion in bounce. Because these bounds were bought at the times when interest rates were much lower than today's rates, SVB expected to take a loss of $1.8 billion from the sales. The need for SVB to sell the bounds was probably because some of its major customers wanted to withdraw the deposits. As of two days ago, SVB was looking to sell $1.25 billion in common stock and another $500 million of convertible preferred shares to keep the bank afloat. But the California bank regulator ultimately decided to shut down the bank instead. Some people are saying that this is a Bear Star moment or Lehman Brothers moment, referring to the bank failures in 2008 that trigger the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent stock market crash. The banks today are supposedly much better equipped to weather financial difficulties because of the more stringent requirements under the Dot Frank Act passed by the U.S. Congress back in 2010. Under the Dot Frank Act, the large banks are prohibited from engaging in various risky activities. Let's hope the major banks are indeed strong enough today to get through this without causing another major financial crisis.