Bonum Certa Men Certa

Mitchell Baker Running a Bank in Silicon Valley

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 11, 2023

Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer. Mitchell Baker na OSCON 2005.

Photo credit: By James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media - https://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/31881581/in/set-660556, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=432850

Bank of Mozilla-can Valley.

So I was looking over Mozilla’s recently-released financial statement for the 2021 fiscal year.

The good news is that letting office leases expired saved them some money. You don’t really need offices anyway between remote work and firing 300 employees.

The bad news is that most of their rainy day fund/cash equivalents is tied up in the bond markets.

Specifically low interest government paper like the kind that brought down Silicon Valley Bank before the recent rout in the bond market which is the worst in American history, and even worse than 1981.

A lot of the rest of it is in corporate debt obligations. Want to take a guess at what kind of corporate debt they have as a chaser to almost-zero interest government bonds that have years and years left until maturity? Might it have been invested in tech crap that is paying junk bond returns because there’s no product? I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me.

The problem with snatching up low interest bonds of 10+ year durations is, you’re stuck with them if interest rates rise which means you can hold them and lose money to inflation and the interest income you would have made with a better bond, which they issue now, or you can raise cash by selling it at a “book loss”.

That is, the loss goes on the book immediately, and someone else is only going to buy this thing if they can get a more attractive deal than going to the Treasury and telling them “I would like a bond.”

One would hope that at Mozilla, some of these college-educated professionals could find a Web browser laying around somewhere and take “interest rate risk 101“, also default risk. That one’s even easier. The junk bonds market pays a lot because there’s a higher risk that you might get stiffed by someone who walks away.

The irony is that this woke mob probably voted for this President of ours (and the ones who didn’t will probably say they did, because that’s what is required in order to not face harassment when you’re surrounded by leftists) who has been running around flushing taxpayer money down the toilet, causing the hyperinflation, which led to the high interest rates in the first place. Then the high interest rates laid waste to the bonds market because it had to adjust too much in such a short period of time.

Bonds are typically issued decades at a time. But conditions under which they’re written can change really fast.

It should be interesting to see how Mozilla’s finances look in the coming statements, especially if they need cash real quick and have to put those losses from losses in theory to losses in fact.

Corporations can buy Certificates of Deposit in amounts that individuals can and still get the same Deposit Insurance, with much shorter rates of “exposure” without ability to easily change lanes.

It was all of these “brilliant tech company CEOs” that decided to put hundreds of millions of dollars in places like Bank of Silicon Valley, and all in one account.

I guess they should find a Web browser laying around and go search how the Deposit Insurance Fund works.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part II: Lying to the IRS is a Big Issue
The OSI of today pretends to be something that it is not
Bloodlust and Love of Blades (Fascination With Murder) Nothing New Among Microsofters
Violence is not a joke and no group is magically entitled to make such "jokes"
Links 01/06/2025: Bird Flu, Food Price Inflation, and Growing US-China Hostilities
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: "Vibe Coding" Turns Out to be a Fraud and Amazon Merits Boycott, Argue Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: "Stardust" and Ideal PC Setup
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, "It's FOSS" Still Promoting Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: Simplification and Networks Everywhere
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 31, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 31, 2025
Google Bribes EFF. EFF Promotes LLM Slop as 'Fair Use'. To GAFAM It's a Low-Cost Lobby Hedge.
So the bribes pay off ("slush fund") and the word spreads
Slopwatch: Fake Text and Images, Financial Bubbles, and Scams in "Intelligent" Clothing
Sometimes what they mean by "AI" is just cheap labour somewhere else, as we discussed in IRC a few hours ago
Why Microsoft is Collapsing (Similar to What's Happening at IBM), As Insiders See It
IBM seems like one heck of a mess
Reliable Computing Means Free (Libre) Computing
Sites that want to promote security ought to deal with the biggest issues
Links 31/05/2025: US Court Orders Sides With RFE/RL, War Updates From Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/05/2025: ARM Server and power_supply Subsystem
Links for the day
Links 31/05/2025: Slop Stigmatised as Disinformation, Catalyst/Driver of "Death of Communication"
Links for the day
Common Sense 101: Do Not Write Blog Posts Saying You Want to Murder Colleagues (or Yourself)
Only crazy people would think stabbings are a joke
Microsoft Bankruptcy
"Microsoft unit in Russia to file for bankruptcy, database shows"
Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Links 31/05/2025: Microsoft-Connected Builder.ai is a Fraud and US is Purging Students Based on Race/Nationality
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Limmat, Doomscrollers, and Arguments Parsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 30, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 30, 2025
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025