What about the VCs? Why were they made whole? They are the ones that owned all these businesses.

Why not? They're depositors like any other. The bank is at fault for making risky investments. VCs didn't cause that any more than the other depositors did.

The VCs took a risk by choosing to use the same bank, not insuring the deposits beyond the FDIC minimum, then stamping toward the exit every man for themselves instead of looking after their own community. Privatized gains and socialized losses.

Blaming depositors for a bank run is stupid. The bad investments and the lack of diversity in depositors are squarely the bank's fault. The bank does not deserve charity from its depositors.

In this case, the 'depositors' are wealthy companies and individuals, by definition holding >$250k, who could afford to do due diligence.

Obviously they were getting perks working with 'Silicon Valley Bank' that didn't exist at say, Wells Fargo. No farmer in America was banking there because, hey, that's obviously kind of a sketchy bank.

There was a reward being given to the wealthy depositors, and none bothered to investigate the associated risk. Well, actually, Thiel did, noticed the risk, and pulled out his companies. Why should we bail out the people who missed this?

>No farmer in America was banking there because, hey, that's obviously kind of a sketchy bank.

Wtf are you talking about? It was the 20th largest bank in the country. It wasn’t some sketchy thing exclusively for startups.

It doesn't matter who was banking there, from my perspective a society where we have to worry about bank runs and bank failures is worse than a society where we don't.

> The bank is at fault for making risky investments.

And the depositors (VC or not) are at fault for putting their money in a risky bank.

The only people who are not at fault are the ones who are being forced to pay for the mistakes.

As we've seen this week, the scrutiny of depositors is far more powerful than that of shareholders.

Shareholders in SVB have already lost all their money, and approximately nobody is arguing for them to be made whole, so I’m not sure I understand this statement. The bailout is for depositors

Shareholder scrutiny preceded and caused the depositor scrutiny.

Edit: I guess the point is that without the threat of depositor scrutiny, shareholders would have no reason to care about SVB's poor investment decisions, since they were only a problem in a bank run scenario caused by depositors. Failing that, the only risk to shareholders would be regulators, and regulators weren't doing anything about this problem, they were enabling it. I think you're right about that.

We've seen the opposite since it started with a failed capital raise and double digit stock price declines.