Ah, paradise. Is that chair open? Great. Hey, do you see that couple over there? The man in the blue t-shirt and brown-reeves sandals and the woman in linen shorts and raybans. They've got a vacation house right up the road here in Maui. I know they look like

totally unremarkable, but they're currently at the center of a global financial crisis.

That's Greg Becker, the CEO, sorry, former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank and his wife, Marilyn Batista.

They flew here this week to hide from the press, but I don't think they're doing a very good job.

That's her mini Cooper over there with the vanity plate that says mare bear.

Okay, let me go get us some more peanut colatus, and I'll fill you in on everything that went down last week.

So Greg was the CEO of Silicon Valley Banks since 2011.

SVB is like an institution in the Bay Area. It's

been around for 40 years. Earlier this month, Greg was hit in the conference circuit, telling

analysts that this year was going to be SVB's best year yet. But everything changed when

Greg got a call from Moody's. He was in his office when the call came in from the ratings agency.

It turns out that the bonds that the bank held were about to be downgraded to junk.

Usually this isn't a big deal.

Banks write off bonds all the time.

But there were a lot of bonds, and SVB just wasn't any bank.

See, they catered to a specific niche, venture capitalist, or as I like to call

them, Silicon Valley boss boys. VCs had flushed startups with cash over the past few years,

and that cash was deposited into SVB, which Greg's team had in turn invested into these bonds.

Now that the bonds were bust, Greg had to put in a call

to a few friends to invest some cash so they could cover their customers' withdrawals. And again,

this normally isn't a big deal, but don't tell that to Peter Thiel. See, Peter Thiel is the

number one Silicon Valley boss boy in this group. If Peter Thiel wears army pants and flip flops, well,

...