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Powell Says Fed Was Baffled by SVB Collapse Despite Warnings

  • Officials were asking the question, ‘How did this happen?’
  • ‘My only interest is that we identify what went wrong here’
Bloomberg business news
Fed Chair Powell: We're All Asking How Bank Turmoil Happened

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell conceded that top officials were stumped at the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month, which spurred widespread panic of a deeper banking crisis and in turn upended global financial markets.

“The question we were all asking ourselves over that first weekend was, ‘How did this happen?’” Powell said Wednesday in a press conference following the US central bank’s March meeting.