Bernie Sanders Blasts Trump For Causing Silicon Valley Bank Failure

Bernie Sanders talks about Nikki Haley's ageism on Face The Nation.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed Trump for the weakening of bank regulations that led to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

Sen. Sanders said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA:

Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed. Five years ago, the Republican Director of the Congressional Budget Office released a report finding that this legislation would ‘increase the likelihood that a large financial firm with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail.’

Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened. During the debate over the legislation I said: ‘Are our memories so short that we learned nothing from the 2008 Wall Street crash? Have we learned nothing from the Savings and Loan disaster of the early 1990s or the thievery of Wells Fargo over the last couple of years or the dishonesty of Equifax or the accounting fraud at Enron and Arthur Anderson or the failure of Long-Term Capital Management or the billions of dollars in fines that financial institution after financial institution has paid out for illegal or deceptive activities?’ Sadly, the Republican Congress and the Trump Administration answered all of these questions with a resounding NO.

Now is not the time for U.S. taxpayers to bail out Silicon Valley Bank. If there is a bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, it must be 100 percent financed by Wall Street and large financial institutions. We cannot continue down the road of more socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. Let us have the courage to stand up to Wall Street, repeal the disastrous 2018 bank deregulation law, break up too big to fail banks and address the needs of working families, not the risky bets of vulture capitalists.

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

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

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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

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