Paul Monasterio 🇺🇦

«I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with» — Isaac Asimov (I Asimov, 1995) t.co/lRgHdmdIdh

There’s a breath of fresh air breezing through the hills and rocky escarpments of Basilicata, in the far south of Italy. It’s a pale blue miniature bus, a tiny, tiny vehicle loaded with books. It’s probably the smallest mobile library in the world. The driver is Antonio La Cava, a retired teacher, who decided to convert his Ape 3-wheeler van (Ape is Italian for bee) into a book repository that he could drive around his region calling at isolated and out-of-the-way villages and inviting the local children to borrow or even be given the book of their choice. Having retired from teaching after 42 years he felt there was still more that he could do when helping children to discover the joy of books and the written word.

2023 was a year of exceptional growth at @KalepaInsurance , and I'm thankful to our clients, partners, and the incredible Kalepa team for the opportunity to work with them. Here's to an excellent 2024! kalepa.com/resources/2023…

What’s going on in Argentina is exciting. The great evil in the world today isn’t so much swaggering generals or marauding sociopaths, but rather the demagoguery, safetyism and risk aversion that has created the overly interventionist state. People won’t try freedom because they’ll be convinced on the merits, but may give it a shot once the failures of the alternatives become clear enough. And those who understand the power of markets have an obligation to keep these ideas alive when the policies that people actually want inevitably fail. The victory though just begins the process of forgetting all over again. Best of luck to Javier Milei, he’s going to need it.

@etherealmaxime @KalepaInsurance @MIT Thank you for the invitation to the show @etherealmaxime! I really enjoyed chatting about the @KalepaInsurance story.

🎙️💵 New #podcast w/ @pmonast, co-Founder & CEO of @KalepaInsurance, one of the most exciting #AI-powered #insurtech #Fintech. Tune in to hear his amazing journey from earning a PhD at @MIT to revolutionizing underwriting technology! 💵🎧💡 open.spotify.com/episode/0GgEWk…

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto -- please read and Ask Me Anything! Post questions as replies to this xeet. a16z.com/the-techno-opt…

The Kalepa team wishes to extend our support and solidarity with the people of Hawai‘i during this difficult time.

What a legend

Not a surprise. @iaventures has been a phenomenal partner to @KalepaInsurance since day 1. Kudos to @beyroutey, @bradgillespie, and @infoarbitrage .

It don’t matter if it’s business or NBA or startups — hire dawgs only

Extraordinary.

This was hugely disappointing. He is a total opportunist.

Silicon Valley Bank’s shareholders and executives lose it all, as they should. Depositors in good faith, however, should recover and have access to their deposits in order to meet their payrolls, pay their suppliers, and to prevent contagion.

I won’t let you politicize a bank run. It’s simple: the government must step in. Build confidence. Save depositors. Shareholders go to zero. I don’t give a damn which industry. All the rest of this is NOISE.

@POTUS What a joke

My Administration is cracking down on illegal, surprise overdraft fees. We’ve already secured $30 million in refunds for about 170,000 account holders. And we won’t stop there.

The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake. By allowing @SVB_Financial to fail without protecting all depositors, the world has woken up to what an uninsured deposit is — an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank. Absent @jpmorgan @citi or @BankofAmerica acquiring SVB before the open on Monday, a prospect I believe to be unlikely, or the gov’t guaranteeing all of SVB’s deposits, the giant sucking sound you will hear will be the withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits from all but the ‘systemically important banks’ (SIBs). These funds will be transferred to the SIBs, US Treasury (UST) money market funds and short-term UST. There is already pressure to transfer cash to short-term UST and UST money market accounts due to the substantially higher yields available on risk-free UST vs. bank deposits. These withdrawals will drain liquidity from community, regional and other banks and begin the destruction of these important institutions. The increased demand for short-term UST will drive short rates lower complicating the @federalreserve’s efforts to raise rates to slow the economy. Already thousands of the fastest growing, most innovative venture-backed companies in the U.S. will begin to fail to make payroll next week. Had the gov’t stepped in on Friday to guarantee SVB’s deposits (in exchange for penny warrants which would have wiped out the substantial majority of its equity value) this could have been avoided and SVB’s 40-year franchise value could have been preserved and transferred to a new owner in exchange for an equity injection. We would have been open to participating. This approach would have minimized the risk of any gov’t losses, and created the potential for substantial profits from the rescue. Instead, I think it is now unlikely any buyer will emerge to acquire the failed bank. The gov’t’s approach has guaranteed that more risk will be concentrated in the SIBs at the expense of other banks, which itself creates more systemic risk. For those who make the case that depositors be damned as it would create moral hazard to save them, consider the feasibility of a world where each depositor must do their own credit assessment of the bank they choose to bank with. I am a pretty sophisticated financial analyst and I find most banks to be a black box despite the 1,000s of pages of @SECGov filings available on each bank. SVB’s senior management made a basic mistake. They invested short-term deposits in longer-term, fixed-rate assets. Thereafter short-term rates went up and a bank run ensued. Senior management screwed up and they should lose their jobs. The @FDICgov and OCC also screwed up. It is their job to monitor our banking system for risk and SVB should have been high on their watch list with more than $200B of assets and $170B of deposits from business borrowers in effectively the same industry. The FDIC’s and OCC’s failure to do their jobs should not be allowed to cause the destruction of 1,000s of our nation’s highest potential and highest growth businesses (and the resulting losses of 10s of 1,000s of jobs for some of our most talented younger generation) while also permanently impairing our community and regional banks’ access to low-cost deposits. This administration is particularly opposed to concentrations of power. Ironically, its approach to SVB’s failure guarantees duopolistic banking risk concentration in a handful of SIBs. My back-of-the envelope review of SVB’s balance sheet suggests that even in a liquidation, depositors should eventually get back about 98% of their deposits, but eventually is too long when you have payroll to meet next week. So even without assigning any franchise value to SVB, the cost of a gov’t guarantee of SVB deposits would be minimal. On the other hand, the unintended consequences of the gov’t’s failure to guarantee SVB deposits are vast and profound and need to be considered and addressed before Monday. Otherwise, watch out below.

Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe. Place SVB with a Top 4 bank. Do this before Monday open or there will be contagion and the crisis will spread.

That list is a joke.

Science is like magic but real cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-m…

In October, I wrote this in @WSJ about the embarrassing visa delays at State/USCIS. 3 months later and no relief in sight. New @IFP website visalimbo.org shows the wait times. 814 days in Lima for an appointment! @AlecStapp @CalebWatney blog.joelonsdale.com/p/the-other-im…