Bernie Sanders blasts Trump for inflicting Silicon Valley financial institution to fail

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed Trump for weakening banking regulation that led to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

Senator Sanders said in a statement to PoliticusUSA:

So that we understand each other. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 banking deregulation bill signed into law by Donald Trump, which I strongly opposed. Five years ago, the Republican director of the Congressional Budget Office released a report noting that this legislation would “increase the likelihood that a large financial company with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. During the debate on the law, I said, “Are our memories so short that we didn’t learn anything from the Wall Street crash of 2008? Didn’t we learn anything from the savings and loans disaster of the early 1990’s, or Wells Fargo’s theft in recent years, or Equifax’s dishonesty, or the accounting fraud at Enron and Arthur Anderson, or the failure of Long-Term Capital Management? the billions of dollars in fines that financial institutions have paid after financial institutions for illegal or fraudulent activity?’ Unfortunately, the Republican Congress and the Trump administration answered all of these questions with a resounding NO.

Now is not the time for US taxpayers to bail out the Silicon Valley bank. If there is a bailout for Silicon Valley Bank, it must be funded 100 percent by Wall Street and big financial institutions. We cannot continue down the path of more socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. Let’s have the courage to stand against Wall Street, repeal the disastrous Bank Deregulation Act of 2018, break up too-big banks, and cater to the needs of working families, not the risky bets of vulture capitalists.

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The corporate media seems ready to dance around the fact that Donald Trump has signed off on the watered-down and removed Dodd-Frank regulations of small and medium-sized regional banks. Republican deregulation efforts always have consequences for people at the middle and at the bottom of the US economy.

This time, the executives and shareholders who caused the bank to fail will not be saved. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that all Silicon Valley bank deposits will be protected so workers at companies that had their money at SVB will be paid, but those at the bank will not persuade the government to fix their mistakes.

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House press pool and congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a bachelor’s degree in political science. His thesis focused on public policy with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and professional memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association