March 10, 2025

Two Years After Silicon Valley Bank Collapse, Warren Lambastes Fed’s Weak Response

Fed Has Failed to Update Rules, Punish Executives After Massive, Costly Bank Collapse 

Warren to Powell: The Fed’s delayed response and failure to hold executives accountable “is an abdication of your responsibility to maintain the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking system and an invite for future mismanagement by the next generation of wealthy bank executives.”

Letter from Ranking Member Warren (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, wrote to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on the two-year anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, pressing for answers about why the Federal Reserve’s investigation into the irresponsible executives behind the collapse has stalled. 

“These executives drove the bank into the ground, requiring extraordinary government intervention and costly support to stave off another catastrophic banking crisis that would have harmed working families. But the Federal Reserve Board has not exercised its clear enforcement authorities against the individuals that egregiously violated banking laws and regulations,” wrote Ranking Member Warren.

Ranking Member Warren continued: “The Federal Reserve Board has also failed to complete any meaningful rulemakings to prevent another similar blow-up. This is an abdication of your responsibility to maintain the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking system and an invite for future mismanagement by the next generation of wealthy bank executives.” 

Ranking Member Warren outlined how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has completed its own separate investigation  and sued former executives of the bank for their role in its collapse, but that as the primary regulator of the bank, the Federal Reserve must also take action to hold executives financially accountable for the unsafe and unsound practices that led to the bank’s collapse. She laid out a series of questions to better understand the latest information on the Fed’s ongoing investigation.

For years, Ranking Member Warren has warned about the dangers of rolling back the key financial stability safeguards enacted in Dodd-Frank, including the 2018 giveaway to big banks that directly paved the way for the collapse of Silicon Valley bank. 

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