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Silicon Valley Bank Crash: President Biden Has Been Handed His Greatest Opportunity Yet To Reshape Global Finance
But will he take it?
We have all been here before.
Bank Crashes aren’t new to my generation.
In 2007–2009, we were gripped by the global financial crash, which was unlike anything we had seen before.
Here in the United Kingdom, it was Northern Rock which got the ball rolling, when vast numbers of people began queuing for their deposits at the Golders Green branch in North London in August 2007.
By September 2008, we were treated to the full spectacle of the entire banking system unravelling: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had seen their liquidity fall to dangerously low levels and it fell to the Bush government to step in and act.
And acted it did. Albeit selectively.
Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO, who was by then the finance minister of the largest economy in the world, took it upon himself to save his former organization; now whether this decision was shaped by the fact that he had stock options will be subject of intense debate from now until the end of time.