Silicon Valley Bank: Another Bailout — Can We Finally Stop Using the Term “Free Market?”

While we’re at it let’s eliminate: entitlements, handouts, democracy vs. authoritarian framing, and more

Mitchell Peterson
7 min readMar 15, 2023
Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash

The Western financial system is once again on shaky footing as the US saw two large bank meltdowns — one the second-largest behind only Lehman Brothers — in incredibly short succession last week. The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have rightfully gotten a ton of attention. Because much of the chaos occurred on a Friday, markets closed, and nobody was sure how they would react once reopened the following Monday morning.

The panic and suspense went way beyond either bank’s depositors with many predicting a full-blown economic meltdown and lines of customers wanting to withdraw deposits from banks across the nation if the government didn’t get involved.

Two relatively large financial institutions tanking in a matter of days doesn’t exactly give confidence in a nation’s banking system.

It doesn’t exude economic stability either.

Details are still emerging and a lot is being written about exactly why Silicon Valley Bank went belly up with deregulation — a lot due to its own lobbying, a lack of oversight…

--

--

Mitchell Peterson

Freelance writer who spent nine years outside the US, currently in rural America writing the Substack bestseller 18 Uncles.