On Feb. 27, 1933, as Herbert Hoover struggled to combat the Great Depression that had plunged millions into poverty and caused a devastating wave of bank failures throughout his presidency, his press secretary Theodore Joslin came home after a long day and was worried about his money. “[A]lthough I felt unpatriotic in doing so, I drew out most of the money in my checking account,” Joslin wrote in his personal diary, noting he instructed his wife to do the same. “And I told the President what I had done. ‘Don’t hoard it, Ted,’ was his only comment … But I am ‘hoarding’ temporarily. No bank is really liquid today and won’t be until this panic is over.”
Of course, that was a time before deposit insurance, which is meant to preserve the funds of individuals who invest their savings with banks in the event of a failure, but the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) earlier this month brought a small taste of that era to panicked startup executives, nearly a century later.
