supposed to prevent another financial meltdown, Silicon Valley Bank, the country’s 17th-biggest bank, went down in flames last week. It was the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history and has prompted a lot of finger-pointing.Management messed up by not addressing a serious cash shortage until it was too late. Some blame Peter Thiel, saying the venture capital investor’s call for small tech firms to withdraw deposits from SVB accelerated its demise. Others are critical of Goldman Sachs, SVB’s adviser who signed off on their ill-advised decision to try to sell equity, thus alerting investors to their capital shortfall.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but when a financial institution goes under, you have to wonder: where were the regulators? After all, there were more red flags than you see at a CCP convention.