Amid a spectacular banking crash over the weekend, the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury have intervened to guarantee $230.6 billion of uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) totaling $151.6 billion in California and Signature Bank in New York totaling $79 billion. It goes without saying this is a terrible precedent. There are $20.8 trillion of checkable and time and savings deposits of which $1 trillion is said to be uninsured—that is, those in accounts above the statutory $250,000 limit for Federal Deposit Insurance—in U.S. affiliated banks as of March 9, according to the latest data compiled by the Federal Reserve. Are the Fed and Treasury planning on guaranteeing all of those deposits, too?
