Axios AM

March 11, 2023
⏰ Happy Saturday! Your phone will spring ahead while you sleep.
- Axios' Erica Pandey, at [email protected], is your AM host. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,293 words ... 5 minutes. Edited by TuAnh Dam.
1 big thing: The largest bank run in history

Silicon Valley Bank's customers withdrew $42 billion from their accounts on Thursday. That's $4.2 billion an hour, or more than $1 million per second for ten hours straight.
- Why it matters: To put that in context, the previous largest bank run in modern U.S. history took place at Washington Mutual bank in 2008, and totaled $16.7 billion over the course of 10 days. That's a mere trickle in comparison to what was seen at SVB, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.
- Above: Compare SVB's wild ride to the KBW Bank index, which tracks 24 bank stocks, including SVB.
🖼️ The big picture: Almost none of SVB's deposits, by value, were FDIC insured — its customers were overwhelmingly corporations with much more than $250,000 in the bank.
- Until 2012, an obscure Fed program insured such corporate accounts, but that expired when the global financial crisis was deemed to be over.
🧠 Between the lines: Most of SVB's customers are just one degree of separation away from a small group of venture capitalists who started making it clear on Thursday that they thought pulling cash from SVB was prudent.
- By yesterday morning, the amount of cash left in SVB's coffers, per California's department of financial innovation and protection, was negative, to the tune of $958 million. SVB itself was insolvent.
The bottom line: No bank can withstand that kind of outflow in a single day. That's why SVB is now a ward of the state, desperately hoping to find a buyer before Monday.
- This weekend is key to determining if the situation escalates from an inconvenience to a crisis for SVB clients, most of which are businesses that need to meet payroll, Axios' Dan Primack writes.
2. 📉 Zoom in: Bank failure hammers market

Stocks just suffered their worst week of 2023, amid the remarkable failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Axios' Matt Phillips writes.
The S&P lost 4.6% in the week ending Friday, its worst weekly showing of the year.
- The selloff started Tuesday, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened the door to a more rapid pace of rate hikes to rein in resurgent inflation.
- The losses deepened on Thursday, after Silicon Valley Bank's sudden move to raise cash spooked investors and depositors, sending bank shares reeling.
- Yesterday, the FDIC's seizure of Silicon Valley Bank seemed to stun the markets and raise questions about whether serious problems were developing in the financial sector.
Why it matters: Last year's 19.4% drop in the S&P 500 was the worst since 2008, and investors had hoped a swift snapback in share prices this year would help repair their 401(k)s.
Flashback: Stocks did burst out of the gates strong, with the S&P rising nearly 9% through early February.
- But resurgent inflation pressures, tough talk from the Fed and, now, jitters around the financial sector have vaporized almost all those gains.
- As of yesterday's close, the benchmark index is now up just 0.6%
3. 🗳️ GOP's budget could hurt in key Senate races
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
If House Republicans go ahead with major spending cuts, they could undermine the party's effort to win the Senate, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.
- Why it matters: Several House Republicans plan to run for competitive Senate seats in 2024. If they vote to cut Medicare, Social Security or other entitlement programs, they could badly hurt their own chances.
Conservatives made a deal with Speaker McCarthy to create a budget that balances over the next decade. That's almost impossible to achieve without touching Medicare or Social Security — though GOP leaders have said they won't touch either program.
- Recent history has proven that budgets, even though they're non-binding, can be devastating in an election. Speaker Paul Ryan's 2012 budget was met with an attack ad showing granny being pushed over a cliff.
🥊 Reality check: With a razor-thin majority, the House GOP leadership has every incentive to keep members from taking votes that could come back to haunt them next year.
- Alex Conant, a former GOP campaign strategist, told us: "I am deeply skeptical that Republican leadership is going to bring a significant entitlement cut to the floor, knowing that it’s not going to become law and would be used against members seeking reelection."
The bottom line: Republicans are much more likely to propose major cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Those cuts are generally seen as less politically risky — but were still deeply unpopular in 2017 when the GOP tried to repeal and replace the ACA.
4. 🎥 Tracking Oscar "thank yous"


We analyzed more than 1,800 Oscar acceptance speeches and found that 97% thanked someone.
- By the numbers: Common words include “academy” (49%), “film” (35%), and “honor” (28%), Axios' Jared Whelan reports.
- And then of course, the name drops: The most commonly referenced names included John (13%), David (9%), Michael (9%), Bob (8%) and Peter (7%).
5. 💼 Shrinking unemployment spells


Here's one thing you might have missed in yesterday's crowd-pleasing jobs report: Americans spent even less time in spells of unemployment.
- Why it matters: The labor market is still hot, which means laid-off workers have plentiful opportunities to find new gigs, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.
By the numbers: The median duration that workers spent unemployed dropped to 8.3 weeks last month.
- In January 2020, pre-pandemic, the number was 9.6.
6.🗽 600-strong walk in the city
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Hundreds of women in cities across the country have a new weekly ritual: a group walk with strangers, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription).
- The trend, which started in New York as "City Girls Who Walk" and went viral on TikTok, has since spread to Chicago, D.C., Cincinnati, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, Philadelphia and beyond.
Young women say they use the hangouts to meet new friends in their cities.
- The D.C. group hosts happy hours, and the Chicago crew does movie night together, The Journal notes.
7. 🦠 COVID milestone
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Today marks three years since the World Health Organization first called the COVID outbreak a pandemic, and the United Nation’s health organization says it’s not yet ready to say the emergency has ended, AP reports.
- The big picture: Most people have resumed their normal lives, but the virus continues to spread, with the global death toll nearing seven million.
What to watch: It's getting harder to keep tabs on COVID as information sources dry up. Johns Hopkins University shut down its trusted tracker yesterday.
8.🕴️Tomorrow's Oscars carpet won't be red

It's champagne-colored, to evoke a beach sunset — the first time since 1961 that the Oscars carpet hasn't been red.
- The hues have varied over the years. But it has always been red, AP reports
- Jimmy Kimmel, who is hosting the 95th Oscars tonight, said Wednesday during the ceremonial unspooling: "I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet over a red carpet shows how confident we are that no blood will be shed.
The decision to change the color came from creative consultants Lisa Love, a longtime Vogue contributor, and Raúl Àvila, the creative director for the Met Gala in New York.
- This year's carpet will be covered — in part to protect the stars and cameras from the weather, but also to help turn the arrivals into an evening event.
Love has always seen a disconnect between the elegant glam dress code, and the fact that it's mid-afternoon PT when stars arrive.

Love said the designers tried some other colors, but they seemed too dark with the covered tent: "We chose this beautiful sienna, saffron color ... because this is the sunset before the golden hour."
- They thought about calling it "sand." Definitely made the right call.
The "red carpet" opens tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. ET. The ceremony begins at 8 p.m., live on ABC.
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