The equity holders in SVB were wiped out, they faced consequences. No reason for deposit holders to.
We need to balance letting the depositors suffer with causing a system wide run, so I think the FDIC/Fed choice was reasonable, but I would have rather seen them, say, guarantee uninsured deposits, less the interest of those deposits earned over the past 18 months.
If government didn’t make it clear they were stepping in here, what do you think would have happened first thing Monday morning? Every small/medium business would have seen the writing on the wall and moved their funds out of small/medium banks and into the handful of “too big to fail” megabanks. Stepping in and making up the cost prevents contagion.
The 250k limit is somewhat of a red herring. If every depositor split their funds up to stay under the 250k limit, it doesn’t actually change the overall risk profile for the FDIC.
So you can get that risk-free extra 2% on your deposit up to 250k, or up to hundreds of millions, and the government will just pay in fine. That opens up new area of business imho.