News Analysis
As the current banking crisis spreads, with First Republic Bank becoming the third major U.S. bank failure of 2023, many are now seeing echoes of what has come to be known as the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008–09.
First Republic’s slow-motion collapse and ultimate acquisition by JPMorgan Chase on May 1 follows the failure of regional banks Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank earlier this year. The assets of these three banks total to more than $500 billion, exceeding the combined assets of banks that failed in 2008.
(Source: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Failed banks by number and value of assets)
Some analysts have pointed out that, with the exception of Washington Mutual Bank, which had $432 billion in assets just prior to its collapse in 2008, all three of this year’s failed banks were larger than any the banks that failed in 2008. First Republic Bank, SVB, and Signature Bank were America’s fourteenth, sixteenth, and twenty-ninth largest banks by assets, respectively….