AL022624
Anniversary Party
March 10 is the one-year anniversary of Silicon Valley Bank’s costly failure, although one might better date the beginning of the end of regional-bank regulation as we knew it to March 8, the date Silvergate bit the digital dust. Congress has talked much of these failures ever since, but actually done nothing but chide the banking agencies from different sides of the political spectrum based on what Members think of the massive regulatory rewrite proposed in SVB’s wake and ongoing internal work at the banking agencies to improve woefully-inadequate supervision. We would add the value also of focusing on the FDIC’s inability to resolve troubled banks to the urgent to-do list, but Congress has yet to turn to it and so neither does the FDIC. Still, lack of action does not mean lack of talk. There will in fact be much, much talk about recent failures when Chair Powell comes to Congress next week and even, we expect, a bit of legislative action that just might change a little bit of banking law.