Talks to Watch

It's A Wonderful Life Bank Run

493K views · Dec 7, 2014 · 4:01 · 0 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2019–2023

The bank run scene from It's a Wonderful Life, in which George Bailey explains to depositors why the bank cannot pay everyone back at once.

Why Hacker News points people here: Used as a classic analogy for fractional reserve banking and bank runs.

What Hacker News said 3

Cites itholy_cityJun 2019

“Someone once told me that U of Chicago”

Classic scene used to teach how banking works.

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Someone once told me that U of Chicago's business school used this classic to describe banking: this video

in “Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game” · view on HN
Cites ithabermanFeb 2021

Scene explaining why deposits can't all be withdrawn at once.

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Call me crazy but I thought the idea is that banks would use deposits to fund loans and kick some of the profit back to the account holder in the form of reasonable interest rates. That seems capital efficient to me, but it's apparently a quaint relic of the past now that eternal 0% interest rates are the norm. I'm reminded of the scene from It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey explains to all his account holders why they can't all withdraw their money at once, because it's being put to productive use by their fellow townspeople: this video

in “Naked shorting: The curious incident of the shares that didn't exist (2005)” · view on HN
Cites itcostcoMar 2023

Classic bank run scene as analogy.

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Where are the people offering to buy SVB claims for 60-70 cents on the dollar? This happened with FTX and traditional bank runs like in [It's a Wonderful Life]( this video ). Maybe people are waiting to see how large the FDIC advances will be.

in “$Roku filed a Form 8-K revealing that $487M stuck at SVB (25% of cash)” · view on HN