"During the Obama-Biden administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, including the Dodd Frank law to make sure that the crisis we saw in 2008 would not happen again. Unfortunately, the last administration rolled back some of these requirements," Biden said at a press conference. "I'm going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again."
He added that the bottom line was that "Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe. Your deposits are safe. Let me also assure you, we will not stop at this. We’ll do whatever is needed."
Specifically, the POTUS insisted that all people who have deposits in the affected banks can rest safe in the knowledge that their money will be protected and that they “will have access to their money as of today.”
He claimed that the losses will be covered not by taxpayers but by the money paid by banks into the deposit insurance fund.
As for the fate of the banks’ managers, they are going to be fired, Biden said, arguing that, “If the bank is taken over by FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), the people running the bank should not work there anymore.”
The US president also stated that the investors in the banks in question will not be enjoying any protection, since they knowingly took the risk by putting their money there.
On March 10, California-based Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the United States, was transferred into receivership after suffering a bank run.
Two days later, on March 12, US regulators have also closed the New York-based Signature Bank, raising concerns about the US banking system as a whole.