6.1Two ways of writing help
Read together, the four texts show two forms of emergency help. The American texts write an outcome for a class of person: depositors will have their money, from Monday, and the size of the promise follows from claims that could not be measured when the first text was written. The Swiss texts write a procedure for a class of institution: loans of three kinds, opened in order, on conditions confirmed by named bodies, with a guarantee behind the last, and a size left to decisions the texts point to but do not contain.
Diamond and Dybvig's model allows either instrument to remove a run (Diamond and Dybvig 1983), and the texts show both in use, in one country even in one statement. What the texts add is how differently the two are committed to in public. A guarantee to depositors can be announced in a sentence because it needs no sum; its credibility rests on who gives it. A ladder of loans needs a statute, because each rung has to say when it opens, on what security, and in what order its claims stand. The difference is one of form, not of generosity; the texts do not allow the amounts committed to be compared.
6.2The sums announced and the sums usable
The research question asks how the sums announced differed from the sums usable. The texts give four kinds of answer.
First, a sum that measures the wrong thing. The FDIC's release gives the bank's total assets and deposits at the end of 2022 and says that the sum that mattered to the uninsured, the amount above the insurance limits, was undetermined. The figure announced is not a figure of help at all.
Second, no sum. The joint statement promises all depositors all of their money and gives no figure for what this covers or might cost; the Board's additional funding is announced without a sum. The Swiss ordinance leaves the maximum of the second rung to the Federal Council and the size of the third to the budget process and to contracts.
Third, a ceiling behind a floor. The amendment's loss guarantee is at most 9 billion francs, and pays nothing until the acquiring bank has borne 5 billion and every asset concerned has been sold. The sum announced is the most the state can pay, at the end of a process whose length the text does not give; the usable sum, at any date before that end, is nothing.
Fourth, sums from elsewhere: the record's two lines of up to 100 billion francs, from a press release not read here, which the record itself treats as limits, not drawings.
The parent study's ledger finds, across the 84 cases it reads, that a record seldom sets a figure announced apart from what was later available or drawn; the Credit Suisse record is one of the few that do. The primary texts of March 2023 suggest a reason the distinction is hard to record: the usable sum is often not a number at the time, but a procedure (the Swiss ladder) or an unknown (the American uninsured deposits). Kindleberger and Aliber hold that the timing and wording of a lender's announcement matter (Kindleberger and Aliber 2005). In this article's reading, the March texts show that the wording can carry a commitment without a sum, and that the sums that circulate may come from texts other than the ones that create the legal commitment.
6.3Who is named as paying
Both sets of primary texts name who bears the cost. The joint statement names shareholders, certain unsecured debtholders and senior management as unprotected, the taxpayer as bearing no loss, and banks as the payers of any losses to the fund. The Swiss texts name the borrower, its owners and its managers, the holders of additional core capital, the shareholders whose votes may be dispensed with, and the acquiring bank as bearer of the first 5 billion francs.
The modern records name none of these. In the parent study's ledger, most of the records that show an act do not name who bore the cost, and these two are no exception: the Silicon Valley Bank record names no bearer, and the two readings of the Credit Suisse record differ on the point. The emergency acts of March 2023 were not silent about their bearers; the silence is in the summaries. A reader who knows the episodes only from the records would not learn that the American guarantee was to be paid for by banks or that the Swiss guarantee stood behind a first loss of 5 billion francs.
6.4Terms, ends and what outlasts them
Of the four texts, only the Swiss ordinance names an end, and it names it precisely: six months from 20.00 on 16 March. The American texts give dates of beginning (the Monday of access) and none of ending. The joint statement does not say for how long the systemic risk exception, the protection of all depositors or the Board's additional funding is meant to last, or on what condition any of them would be revisited.
The contrast speaks to the debate over rules and discretion, but it does not settle it. Tucker's call for rules set in advance and agreed with the government (Tucker 2018) is met by the Swiss ordinance only in part: the framework is agreed with the government, because it is the government's act, and it is written down in detail, but it is written in the week of need, not before it, and amended on 19 March. Posner and Vermeule's account of an executive that acts first while others defer (Posner and Vermeule 2010) describes the form of the American statement, in which the Secretary approves after a recommendation and a consultation, and the legal basis is not cited; their account is of American practice, and the statement does not say whether any other branch deferred. Applied by this article to Gross and Ní Aoláin's models (Gross and Ní Aoláin 2006), both acts fall inside the law, but in different ways: the Swiss ordinance cites constitutional articles and departs expressly from named statutes; the American statement says that the special assessment is "as required by law" and leaves its own legal basis implicit in the phrase "systemic risk exception".
On whether emergency measures end, the texts can say only what they promised. The Swiss term is a promise that a later reader could test, and Higgs's ratchet (Higgs 1987) is a reason to want such a test; but the same ordinance writes duties that last until repayment and a guarantee that falls due five years after a bankruptcy, so that the term of the ordinance and the life of its obligations are not the same. Neither the texts nor the records say what became of either country's measures after March 2023, and this article does not say either.
6.5What the evidence can and cannot carry
The texts are evidence of what the authorities wrote and published at the time, not of what they decided in private, of what was paid, or of whether the run in either country stopped. Within that limit, three things are secure. The American texts promised an outcome without a sum or an end and named who would bear the cost. The Swiss texts set out a procedure without a loan sum, with a stated term and named bearers, and added a capped guarantee behind a first loss. The modern records keep the sums and the distinctions between them, and drop the terms and the bearers that the primary texts state.
What the evidence cannot carry is any judgment of which form of help was better, or whether either was legitimate, or whether either worked. Metrick's account discusses the regulatory and supervisory failures behind the American episode and the questions it raises for deposit insurance (Metrick 2024); those questions need evidence that the texts do not hold.