It was approaching midnight in Washington and 9 p.m. in Santa Clara, California. The news was bad—and getting worse. Everyone from President Joe Biden on down was getting a crash course on Silicon Valley Bank, the once-obscure tech lender that has now cast a big shadow over the financial markets.
At the White House and the US Department of the Treasury next door, bleary-eyed officials were racing to prevent the trouble at SVB from exploding into a full-blown banking crisis. A block west at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., regulators were arguing about what to do. Over at the Gridiron Club dinner, Washington’s annual see-and-be-seen white-tie journalism roast, a marquee guest, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, was conspicuously absent.
