Bernie Sanders says Silicon Valley Bank’s failure is a “direct result” of Trump-era banking regulation policies

• Senator Bernie Sanders blames Trump-era policies for the run on the Silicon Valley bank.

• Sanders said the 2018 law deregulated the industry and sowed the seeds of bank failure.

• Sanders said the 2018 law must be repealed to “break up too big to fail banks”.

Senator Bernie Sanders has blamed a Trump-era banking law The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank.

“To put it bluntly. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct consequence of an absurd 2018 banking deregulation bill signed into law by Donald Trump, which I strongly disagree with,” Sanders said wrote in a statement on Sunday.

Sanders referred to the Economic growth, regulatory relief and consumer protection lawformer President Donald Trump came into force in May 2018.

The bill was viewed as a significant rollback of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Commenting on previous banking reforms, Trump signed the bill into law, saying, “You’ve been in such trouble. One size fits all – those rules just don’t work,” per The Washington Post.

Trump also said at the time that the Dodd-Frank regulations would “crush community banks and credit unions nationwide.”

Signing the bill into law meant Trump freed smaller banks from strict regulations and relaxed rules that big banks had to follow. The law raised the asset threshold for “systematically important financial institutions” from $50 billion to $250 billion.

This meant that Silicon Valley Bank – which ended 2022 with assets of $209 billion – was no longer classified as a systematically important financial institution. It was therefore not subject to the more stringent regulations that apply to larger banks.

Sanders wrote in his Sunday statement that the Trump administration disregarded all the lessons it should have learned from the 2008 Wall Street crash and the Enron scandal.

“Now is not the time for US taxpayers to bail out the Silicon Valley bank. If there is a bailout for Silicon Valley Bank, it must be 100 percent funded by Wall Street and big financial institutions,” he wrote.

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Sanders added that the US “cannot continue down the path of more socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.”

“Let’s have the courage to stand against Wall Street, repeal the disastrous 2018 Bank Deregulation Act, break up too-big banks, and appeal to the needs of working families, not the risky bets of vulture capitalists,” Sanders wrote.

For his part, Trump has claimed without justification that the run on Silicon Valley Bank should be blamed on “the economy”.

“With what is happening to our economy, and with the proposals for THE BIGGEST AND STUPID TAX RISE IN US HISTORY, FIVE TIMES, JOE BIDEN WILL GO DOWN AS THE HERBERT HOOVER OF THE MODERN AGE.” Trump wrote on truth social.

“WE WILL HAVE A GREAT DEPRESSION MUCH BIGGER AND MUCH MORE POWERFUL THAN THAT OF 1929,” Trump continued. “AS PROOF THE BANKS ARE ALREADY BEGINNING!!!”

A Trump spokesman told Insider that “runaway Democrats and the Biden administration have continued pathetically to blame President Trump for their failures with desperate lies, such as the CCP spy balloons, the East Palestine train derailment and now the Collapse of the US government SVB.”

“This is nothing more than a sad attempt to gaslight the public to avoid responsibility,” the rep told Insider.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Company closed the Silicon Valley Bank on Friday after a disastrous bank run. The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank is now the largest banking collapse in the US since 2008 financial crisis.

The FDIC insured deposits for up to $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category. However, startups with funds in Silicon Valley Bank exceed $250,000 now run the risk of not being able to do payroll next week.

Continue reading the original article Business Insider