Former Treasury Official Says US Banks On Verge Of ‘Nationalization’

Former Treasury Official Says US Banks On Verge Of ‘Nationalization’

Harold Hutchison on March 14, 2023

A former Treasury Department official said Tuesday that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized following the Friday collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the government’s response.

“What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means — and they won’t say it, and I’ll come back to that — what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base,” Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, told CNN host Kaitlan Collins. “Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say, at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course they are.”

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Federal regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank Friday after its stock price collapsed and customers began a bank run following the financial institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion loss on asset sales due to high interest rates, CNBC reported. Depositors who had accounts at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which was shut down by regulators Sunday, will be able to fully recover their funds, the FDIC announced Sunday in conjunction with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

“So this is a breathtaking step which effectively nationalizes or federalizes the deposit base of the U.S. financial system. You can call it a bailout, you can call it something else, but it’s really absolutely profound,” Altman continued. “Now, the authorities, including the White House, are not going to say that because what I just said of course implies that they have just nationalized the banking system. Technically speaking, they haven’t. But in a broad sense, they are verging on that.”

When Collins called Altman’s statements “remarkable,” Altman emphasized that he had not said the banks had been nationalized.

“I said they are verging on that because they have guaranteed the entire deposit base. Usually the term nationalization means that the government takes over the institution and runs it and the government owns it,” Altman explained. “That would be the type of nationalization we have seen in many other countries throughout the world. Obviously, that did not happen here. When you guarantee the entire deposit base, you have put the federal government and the taxpayer in a much different place in terms of protection than we were in a week ago.”