Of course, we also would have seen runs on many more regional banks. The "too big to fail" banks like JP Morgan and BofA would only have gotten much larger.
Imagine if you had to do several hours of research on every single thing you purchased and investment you made, you'd never have time for anything else and there's still a chance you miss something.
Compare that to experts doing it and spending a lot more time on it, then slapping anyone who is not up to standard. It's a way more efficient system.
Asking depositors to do the due deligence is a strawman.
Except that there are many commenters in this exact thread making that argument.
As for splitting up your deposit into $250k chunks, I agree, companies should do this as much as possible. But it would be hard for some companies. An extreme case is Circle, who says they had $3.3 billion in SVB. To get all of this covered, would require 13,200 different banks. It looks like there are only 4,236 FDIC-insured banks in the US. Add in another 4,853 NCUA-insured credit unions, and we're still left with $873 million uninsured, despite using nearly 10,000 accounts.
Sure, I don't want depositors to have to do tons of due diligence to manage a small business payroll. But I am also fine saying that a company with over 2 billion in USD should be able to afford to find safe places to stash it.
Spread 250ks all comes out of the same fdic pool anyway, so why bother?
I think the government should reserve the right to haircut large depositors in cases where there is serious negligence or malfeasance, so it makes sense to have the limit. But it's also a good idea not to do that in cases of mere incompetence, like here.
The alternative is to do like Canada and basically keep around a handful of big banks and make it illegal for them to acquire each other (to avoid further concentration). We don't have to rescue them basically ever... but if we did it would be abysmally expensive. And customer service is garbage.
Until the law changes, you have to look out for yourself and not beg for bailout. Also, this is not complex since software takes care of it behind the scenes. Our company did it from day 1.
Also more than half of deposits by volume are FDIC insured so the system can handle the whole volume if the customers choose to do so
Asking them to insure their own funds is a reasonable thing to do though
My point was that the existing tools and infra was enough for svb customers to secure themselves. At a high level, they didn't bother getting an insurance and now they beg for bailout.
It certainly should be if they aren't paying for their accounts to be insured. The government does not exist to prevent private companies from going out of business.
> sure they're compliant is exactly the kind of thing government is _for_.
And if regulations magically remove all risk, then insurance should be very cheap so no reason not to get it.
Even if they are when you open the account, how often should you check to make sure they still are?
If insurance is necessary then the banks should pay for it, then if they want to have lower insurance premiums it's up to them to lower their risk profile. Yes, they will pass these costs on to the customer, but banks with lower risk profiles will then be cheaper making them more popular, and increasing stability of the entire system.