Silicon Valley Bank

US Bank Bailout Benefited Billionaires, Exposing Corruption

April 10, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Bailout, Banking Crisis, Deregulation, Silicon Valley Bank

When current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen served as chair of the Federal Reserve in 2017, she confidently predicted that there would not be another financial crisis “in our lifetimes”. Less than six years later, in March 2023, three US banks collapsed in just one week. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the second- and third-largest banks to go under in US history. And after they crashed, the government immediately bailed out their wealthy depositors. Among the main beneficiaries of this bailout were billionaires and big corporations. The government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures US bank deposits up to $250,000 per customer.

Banking Crisis 3.0: Time To Change The Rules Of The Game

March 24, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Banking Crisis, Finance and the Economy, Nationalization, Silicon Valley Bank

So what caused this crisis, and what can be done to remedy it? In the midst of the 2008 economic crisis, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan conceded that there was a flaw in his perception of the financial operating system. For 40 years, he had believed that banks could “self regulate” responsibly, a presumption that had proven to be flawed. In the case of SVB, however, the bank was not engaged in the sort of risky lending seen in the subprime crisis, and increased “stress testing” wouldn’t have saved it. It had put its deposits largely in federal securities, purported to be the safest assets available – so safe that they carry a “zero risk weighting” requiring no extra capital buffer.

Today’s Banking Crisis: Deep Origins And Future Directions

March 23, 2023 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. Educate! Banking Crisis, European Union (EU), Finance and the Economy, Silicon Valley Bank

It’s been a week since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US at the time of its collapse and reportedly a source of funding for half of all the tech start ups in the US. It’s now become clear the more general banking crisis that has emerged is not due simply to a rogue, mismanaged bank that over-extended itself during the recent tech boom and then somehow mysteriously imploded in just 72 hours, March 7-9, until seized by the FDIC on the morning of March 10, 2023. Deeper, more systemic forces are at play—in the case of both the SVB collapse and the now spreading contagion to US regional banks as well as to European banks.

Bailout Of Silicon Valley And Banks Is $300 Billion Gift To Rich Oligarchs

March 20, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Banking Crisis, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Silicon Valley Bank

The US government printed $300 billion in a week to save collapsing banks and bail out Silicon Valley oligarchs and venture capital firms, paying them all of their uninsured deposits. Meanwhile, some of the very same Silicon Valley tycoons who benefited from this bailout have tried to cynically rebrand themselves as subversive populists, claiming they are fighting against the big Wall Street banks with which they have closely collaborated. Three banks collapsed in the United States in the span of one week in March 2023: Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank.

The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami

March 13, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Educate! Banking Crisis, Derivatives, Finance and the Economy, Silicon Valley Bank

On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves. Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called “systemically important” is not their asset size but the fact that their failure could bring down the whole financial system.

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