Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chair Sheila Bair has said that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) received a “bailout” out from the federal government following its collapse last week.
Bair made the comments during an appearance on FOX Business Network’s “The Claman Countdown” on Mar. 13, shortly after the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the FDIC announced additional funding to ensure all deposits at SVB, both insured and uninsured, are returned in full.
Bair, who played a prominent role in the government’s response to the financial crisis of 2008–09, was asked if the decision amounted to a “bailout.”
“Well, it is a bailout—different people define ‘bailouts’ in different ways,” Bair said. “We have a set of rules, we give a lot of support to banks; deposit insurance is one of the things we let banks have—they pay a premium for it, it’s capped at $250,000. If we change those rules for a couple of banks and then give them more coverage than anybody else gets, or they were entitled to under the law, I think that’s a bailout.”…