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      in US Politics

      Why did the $212bn tech-lender Silicon Valley bank abruptly collapse?

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      The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continues to reverberate, hitting bank stocks, revealing hidden stresses, knocking on to Credit Suisse, and setting off a political blame-game.Why the $212bn tech-lender abruptly collapsed, triggering the most significant financial crisis since 2008, has no single answer. Was it, as some argue, the result of Trump-era regulation rollbacks, risk mismanagement at the bank, sharp interest rate rises after a decade of ultra-low borrowing costs, or perhaps a combination of all three?Federal investigations have begun and lawsuits have been filed and no doubt new issues at the bank will emerge. But for now, here are the main reasons experts believed SVB failed.Trump rollbacksThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders argues that the culprit was an “absurd” 2018 law, supported by Congress and signed by Donald Trump, that undid some of the credit requirements imposed under the Dodd-Frank banking legislation brought in after the 2008 banking crisis.Dodd-Frank required that banks with at least $50bn in assets – banks considered “systemically important” – undergo an annual Federal Reserve “stress test” and maintain certain levels of capital as well as plans for a living will if they failed.SVB’s chief executive, Greg Becker, argued before Congress in 2015 that the $50bn threshold (SVB held $40bn at the time) was unnecessary and his bank, like other “mid-sized” or regional banks, “does not present systemic risks”.Trump said the new bill went a “long way toward fixing” Dodd-Frank, which he called a “job-killer”. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned before the bill passed that raising the threshold would “increase the likelihood that a large financial firm with assets of between $100bn and $250bn would fail.” Joe Biden says he wants Trump’s rollbacks reversed.SVB’s managementThe bank didn’t have a chief risk officer (CRO) for some of 2022, a situation that’s now being looked at by the Federal Reserve, according to reports. SVB’s previous CRO, Laura Izurieta, left the company in October but stopped performing the role in April. Another was appointed in December.Early SVB shareholder lawsuits are said to be looking at the key vacancy, especially as the board’s risk committee was meeting frequently before the bank collapsed.“It means perhaps management was hiding something or didn’t want to disclose something, or had disagreements over the risks it was taking,” said Reed Kathrein, a lawyer specializing in shareholder lawsuits, to Bloomberg.“This isn’t greed, necessarily, at the bank level,” said Danny Moses, an investor who predicted the 2008 financial crisis in the book and movie The Big Short. “It’s just bad risk management. It was complete and utter bad risk management on the part of SVB.”SVB and Signature, the second mid-size bank to fail last week, have also been accused of prioritizing social justice over financial management. The Republican House oversight committee chairman, James Comer, called SVB “one of the most woke banks”.The narrative fed into a larger conflict over ESG, or environmental, social and corporate governance-driven investing, that has become a target of conservatives.But the bank’s loans to community and environmental projects were not central to its collapse nor are its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies dissimilar to other banks. The argument also fails to take into account all the banks that existed in 2008, before DEI or “woke” became a part of corporate or political discourse.Nevertheless the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, continued on that theme, telling Fox News, that SVB was “so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff. I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission.”Inflation and interest ratesSVB had benefited from from more than a decade of “zero money” interest rates as billions poured into the bank via tech venture capital. Looking for some kind of a return, it put the money into long-term US treasury bonds. But when interest rates started sharply rising last year, and depositors demanded higher returns, the bank was forced to sell some of those bonds at a loss. When news of that hit social media, tech investors panicked, triggering a classic bank run. From there, it took 36 hours for the second-biggest bank failure in US history to materialize.Before the collapses, investors had been expecting the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by a quarter or half a percentage point when the governors meet next week. Now central bankers are in a bind: continue raising rates to tame inflation still running at 6% and risk another break in the financial system, or continue tightening money supply.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, gave a hint on Thursday when she told the Senate finance committee that “more work needs to be done” on inflation.What happens next?Financial jitters eased on Thursday after Wall Street rode to the rescue and propped up First Republic, another mid-sized bank whose customers were fleeing. But the respite may be brief.Goldman Sachs has raised its prediction for a recession in the next year to 35%, partly as a result of lending drops by regional banks.In the meantime it seems clear that investigators are likely to uncover more problems at the banks as their inquiries continue. Those revelations may trigger more concerns from depositors and investors.On Thursday, the Republican house financial services chairman, Patrick McHenry, said people should hold off on assigning blame for the collapse of SVB and Signature while Congress and watchdogs investigate.“When people jump to these conclusions at this stage of the game – a week in on this really stressed moment for our banking system – it’s unhelpful and quite politically hackish,” McHenry told Bloomberg. More

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      in US Politics

      Silicon Valley Bank said it was too small to need regulation. Now it’s ‘too big to fail’ | Rebecca Burns and Julia Rock

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      Silicon Valley Bank was supposedly the type of institution that would never need a government bailout – right until its backers spent three days on social media demanding one, and then promptly receiving it, after the bank’s spectacular collapse last week.Eight years ago, when the bank’s CEO, Greg Becker, personally pressed Congress to exempt SVB from post-2008 financial reform rules, he cited its “low risk profile” and role supporting “job-creating companies in the innovation economy”. Those companies include crypto outfits and venture capital firms typically opposed to the kind of government intervention they benefited from on Sunday, when regulators moved to guarantee SVB customers immediate access to their largely uninsured deposits.Fifteen years after the global financial crisis, the logic of “too big to fail” still prevails. The financial hardship of student debtors and underwater homeowners is a private problem – but losses sustained by titans of tech and finance are a matter of urgent public interest. Moral hazard for thee, but not for me.What’s more, SVB’s meteoric rise and fall serves as a reminder that many of the guardrails erected after the last crisis have since been dismantled – at the behest of banks like SVB, and with the help of lawmakers from both parties beholden to entrenched finance and tech lobbies.Before becoming the second-largest bank to fail in US history, SVB had transformed itself into a formidable influence machine – both in northern California, where it became the go-to lender for startups, and on Capitol Hill, where it spent close to a million dollars in a five-year period lobbying for the deregulatory policies that ultimately created the conditions for its downfall.“There are many ways to describe us,” SVB boasts on its website. “‘Bank’ is just one.”Indeed, SVB’s management appears to have neglected the basics of actual banking – the bank had no chief risk officer for most of last year, and failed to hedge its bets on interest rates, which ultimately played a key role in the bank’s downfall. In the meantime, the bank’s deposits ballooned from less than $50bn in 2019 to nearly $200bn in 2021.From the moment that Congress passed banking reforms through the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, SVB lobbied to defang the same rules that would probably have allowed regulators to spot trouble sooner. On many occasions, lawmakers and regulators from both parties bowed to the bank’s demands.One of SVB’s first targets was a key Dodd-Frank reform aimed at preventing federally insured banks from using deposits for risky investments. In 2012, SVB petitioned the Obama administration to exempt venture capital from the so-called Volcker Rule, which prevented banks from investing in or sponsoring private equity or hedge funds.​​“Venture investments are not the type of high-risk, ‘casino-like’ activities Congress designed the Volcker Rule to eliminate,” the bank argued to regulators. “Venture capital investments fund the high-growth startup companies that will drive innovation, create jobs, promote our economic growth, and help the United States compete in the global marketplace.”After the Obama administration finalized the Volcker Rule in 2014 without a venture capital carveout, SVB sought its own exemption that would allow it to maintain direct investments in venture capital funds, in addition to providing traditional banking services for roughly half of all venture-backed companies.One such firm was Ribbit Capital, a key investor in the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which lauded SVB’s tech-friendly ethos in a 2015 New York Times profile. “You can go to a big bank, but you have to teach them how you are doing your investment,” Ribbit’s founder told the Times. At SBV, “these guys breathe, eat and drink this Kool-Aid every day.”In the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, SVB got what it wanted: a string of deregulation, based on the idea that the bank posed no threat to the financial system.In 2015, Becker, the CEO, submitted testimony to Congress arguing that SVB, “like our mid-size peers, does not present systemic risks” – and therefore should not be subject to the more stringent regulations, stress tests and capital requirements required at the time for banks with $50bn or more in assets.Two years later, SVB was one of just a handful of banks to receive a five-year exemption from the Volcker Rule, allowing it to maintain its investments in high-risk venture capital funds.The deregulatory drumbeat grew louder in Congress, and in 2018 lawmakers passed legislation increasing to $250bn the threshold at which banks receive enhanced supervision – again, based on the argument that smaller banks would never prove “too big to fail”.The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, supported the deregulatory push. Under Powell, a former private equity executive, the Fed in 2019 implemented a so-called “tailoring rule”, further exempting mid-size banks from liquidity requirements and stress tests.Even then, the banks’ lobbying groups continued to push a blanket exemption to the Volcker Rule for venture capital funds, which Powell advocated for and banking regulators granted in 2020.Then, in 2021, SVB won the Federal Reserve’s signoff on its $900m acquisition of Boston Private Bank and Trust, on the grounds that the post-merger bank would not “pose significant risk to the financial system in the event of financial distress”.“SVB Group’s management has the experience and resources to ensure that the combined organization would operate in a safe and sound manner,” Federal Reserve officials wrote.Since the financial crisis, SVB has reported spending more than $2m on federal lobbying efforts, while the bank’s political action committee and executives have made nearly $650,000 in campaign contributions, the bulk to Democrats.Among the highlights of this influence campaign was a 2016 fundraiser for the Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia, hosted by Greg Becker in his Menlo Park home. A few months later, Warner and three other Democratic senators wrote to regulators arguing for weaker capital rules on regional banks.Warner went on to become one of 50 congressional Democrats who joined with Republicans to pass the 2018 Dodd-Frank rollback. When asked this week about his vote, Warner said: “I think it put in place an appropriate level of regulation on mid-sized banks … these mid-sized banks needed some regulatory relief.”In the wake of SVB’s collapse, Republicans have not renounced their votes for deregulation – nor have most of the Democrats who joined them, even as Biden is promising a crackdown.Warner took to ABC’s This Week on Sunday to defend his vote; Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat from New Hampshire, told NBC on Tuesday that “all the regulation in the world isn’t going to fix bad management practices”. Senator Jon Tester, the Democrat from Montana and a co-sponsor of the 2018 deregulatory law, even held a fundraiser in Silicon Valley the day after the SVB bailout was announced.Unless they reverse course, the Silicon Valley Bank bailout could prove politically disastrous for Democrats, who just oversaw the rescue of coastal elites in a moment of ongoing economic pain for everyone else.The good news is that there are straightforward steps that Democrats can take to start fixing things.For example: Senator Elizabeth Warren’s legislation to repeal Trump-era financial deregulation.Democrats can also revisit the areas where Dodd-Frank fell short, including stronger minimum capital requirements, and consider longstanding proposals to disincentivize risky behavior by banks by reforming bankers’ pay. And they should demand that Powell recuse himself from the Federal Reserve investigation of recent bank failures and take a hard look at whether his disastrous record merits outright dismissal under the Federal Reserve Act, which allows the president to fire a central bank chair “for cause”.And yet even now – amid the wreckage of deregulation – these and other measures to better regulate the banks may still be nonstarters among both the Republicans and corporate Democrats who voted for the regulatory rollbacks and have so far shown little sign of repentance.The words of the Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin still ring true, 14 years after the financial crisis.“The banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” he said back in 2009. “And they frankly own the place.”If that remains true today, the possibility of change looks grim.
      Rebecca Burns and Julia Rock are reporters for the Lever, an independent investigative news outlet, where a version of this article also appeared More

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      in Elections

      US banking system 'remains sound' despite bank collapses, says Janet Yellen – video

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      Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, told Congress that the recent collapses of two US banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, does not reflect on the overall strength of the US banking system. She told Congress the US banking system ‘remains sound’, claiming that the government’s swift response to the failures helped to restore public confidence in the banking system. ‘I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,’ she said More

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      in US Politics

      US banking system 'remains sound' despite bank collapses, says treasury secretary Yellen – video

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      Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, informed Congress that the recent collapses of two US banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, does not reflect on the overall strength of the US banking system. Yellen told Congress the US banking system ‘remains sound,’ claiming that the government’s swift response to the failures helped to restore public confidence in the banking system. ‘I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,’ she said More

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      in US Politics

      US banks launch $30bn rescue of First Republic to stem spiraling crisis

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      Wall Street’s giants moved to end the US’s spiraling banking crisis on Thursday by agreeing to prop up troubled First Republic, a mid-sized bank whose shares have been pummeled amid a wider banking turmoil.Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others will deposit $30bn in First Republic, which has seen customers yank their money following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and fears that First Republic could be next.“The actions of America’s largest banks reflect their confidence in the country’s banking system. Together, we are deploying our financial strength and liquidity into the larger system, where it is needed the most,” the banks said in a joint statement on Thursday.The big banks have received billions in deposits from smaller, regional banks as the banking crisis has spooked their customers. US authorities swooped in to take control of SVB and New York’s Signature bank last weekend after frightened customers pulled their deposits.Banks and regulators are hoping that the action will act as a firewall by protecting First Republic and stopping the crisis spreading to other smaller banks.Shares in First Republic – a San Francisco-based bank that largely caters to wealthier clients including Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg – had fallen about 70% since the news of SVB’s collapse. They fell another 22% on Thursday before the bailout but ended the day up nearly 10%.In a joint statement, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell and senior regulators said: “This show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system.”Ahead of the news Yellen assured Congress on Thursday that the US banking system was “sound”.“I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system is sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” she told the Senate finance committee.SVB had a high percentage of “uninsured” deposits – deposits above the $250,000 government insured limit. SVB’s uninsured deposits accounted for 94% of its total. First Republic’s percentage of uninsured deposits was far lower – at 68% according to S&P Global – but was high enough to worry investors and depositors with more than $250,000 in accounts at the bank.The unprecedented rescue plan will see most of the US’s largest banks making uninsured deposits into First Republic. Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are each making a $5bn deposit into First Republic. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are each making deposits of $2.5bn, and BNY Mellon, PNC Bank, State Street, Truist and US Bank are each making a deposit of $1bn, for a total deposit from the eleven banks of $30bn.The news came as the Swiss central bank issued a $53.7bn loan to Credit Suisse to stem its own crisis of confidence. The long-troubled bank’s share price had collapsed after its largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, said it was unable to provide more financing to Credit Suisse. More

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      in US Politics

      Biggest US banks weigh rescuing First Republic as its shares tumble – report

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      Some of the US’s biggest banks are weighing a rescue bid for First Republic, a mid-sized bank whose shares have been pummeled amid a wider banking turmoil.Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are among the banks discussing a lifeline for the San Francisco-based lender, according to the Wall Street Journal.The Journal also reported that top executives at the bank had sold millions of dollars in shares in the bank in the two months leading up to its share price collapse. In total insiders have sold $11.8m worth of stock so far this year.First Republic’s shares fell 22% on Thursday morning but bounced back after the news of a possible deal broke. They are down close to 70% over the last five trading days and the bank’s market capitalization has fallen from $21bn on 8 March, when the Silicon Valley Bank ( SVB) crisis began, to less than $5bn.Any deal would need to be passed by regulators and the Journal said the situation was highly uncertain.First Republic, known for its affluent customer base, has been hit hard following the collapse of SVB, which was seized by federal regulators over the weekend.First Republic, like some other regional banks, has a large amounts of uninsured deposits above the $250,000 government insured limit. SVB’s uninsured deposits accounted for 94% of its total. Some 68% of First Republic deposits are uninsured, according to S&P Global, far lower than SVB but high enough to worry investors and depositors.Customers have pulled billions in deposits from the bank and S&P Global Rating downgraded the bank’s credit rating to junk on Tuesday.Over the weekend the bank announced it had secured another $70bn in financing from the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan.“First Republic’s capital and liquidity positions are very strong, and its capital remains well above the regulatory threshold for well-capitalized banks,” Jim Herbert, founder and executive chairman, and Mike Roffler, CEO and president of First Republic, said in a statement.But the announcement appears to have done little to assuage investor and customer fears.SVB’s collapse was the second largest since the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis. It was accompanied by the failure of New York-based Signature, which also failed after fears about its finances led customers to yank their funds.Speaking to Congress on Thursday, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the US banking system remained “sound”.“I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system is sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” she said.The Fed’s intervention has drawn parallels to the unpopular bailout of Wall Street banks after the 2008 financial crisis. Yellen said the latest rescue efforts were markedly different.“Shareholders and debt holders are not being protected by the government,” she said. “Importantly, no taxpayer money is being used or put at risk with this action.” More

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      Be serious, conservatives. ‘Wokeness’ didn’t cause Silicon Valley Bank’s demise | Tayo Bero

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      You’d think that witnessing the second-biggest bank failure in US history would be a sobering moment. Since Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday amid a bank run, however, Republicans have instead been twisting themselves into inelegant pretzels to blame “wokeness” for the financial disaster.For context, SVB – which before it collapsed was the 16th largest bank in the US and worth more than $200bn in assets – proudly reported that aside from 45% of its board being women, it also had “1 Black”, “1 LGBTQ+” and “2 Veterans”. According to Republicans, the bank’s focus on “woke” ideals is what led to its ultimate demise.“This bank, they’re so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff, I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission,” the Florida governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.And according to Donald Trump, Jr: “SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedent over common sense business practices. This won’t be the last failure of this nature so long as people are rewarded for pushing this bs.”This is a ridiculous and senseless leap, even for the right. “Wokeness” has gone from being a hamfisted shorthand for progressive overreach to a convenient – if lazy and illogical – explanation for every catastrophe.Of course, the actual circumstances that led to the collapse of SVB are of no importance here. Republicans have said little about the higher interest rates brought on by inflation anxiety and bad government bonds that helped SVB speed toward collapse.They’ve also refused to acknowledge that, as James Downie writes in MSNBC, “SVB might still be around today but for deregulation signed by former President Donald Trump that was supported almost unanimously by Republicans (and even some Democrats).”Look, it’s not easy to decide who deserves sympathy, or the opposite, in this moment. Nobody wants to “side” with a sinking Silicon Valley institution – we’re supposed to be eating the rich, remember? Still, it’s important to remember that while politicians spin this disaster, workers suffer. Americans will probably go without paychecks; some won’t have have jobs when this shakes out.According to The Verge, “Some people already know their paychecks will be [disrupted]; a payroll service company called Rippling had to tell its customers that some paychecks weren’t coming on time because of the SVB collapse.”Most of those people aren’t high-flying Silicon Valley tech founders. For some of these workers, money for rent, groceries, mortgage payments, childcare and other essentials simply isn’t coming.The right has always been contemptuous of corporate solidarity with marginalized people, so their disdain for SVB’s messaging is unsurprising. In a line that truly sounds like something out of an SNL sketch, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus recently claimed on Fox News that SVB collapsed because the bank was overly concerned with global warming.“I feel bad for all of these people that lost all their money in this woke bank,” he said. “It’s depressing to me. Who knows whether the justice department would go after them? They’re a woke company, so I guess not. And they’ll probably get away with it.”The New York Post is also toeing the party line, accusing the bank’s head of risk management of wasting time in “spearheading multiple ‘woke’ LGBTQ+ programs, including a ‘safe space’ for coming-out stories”, even as “the firm raced toward collapse”.God forbid a financial institution be concerned with anything that even remotely falls outside their mandate of self-enrichment.SVB was a part of a Silicon Valley economic machine that has helped drive the tech industry’s success for decades. Initial reporting suggests that shoddy practices at the bank brought about its collapse; either way, that doesn’t change the essentially sad story here.As institutions continue to crumble under the weight of shaky policy and a volatile economy, it’s the people at the very bottom of that food chain who will suffer the most. That’s not because of “wokeness”. It’s just called capitalism.
      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US contributing writer More