Hi, I'm Charles Farrell. I'm the financial editor at the Wall Street Journal.

And it's Sunday night and we're not watching the Oscars. We're watching a banking crisis

unfold. It's vastly more exciting. This is a bad as interesting as the Gatson finance.

This is pretty wild. You don't see banks fail every day, especially not banks of the size.

The bank Charles is talking about is Silicon Valley Bank. This bank catered to the tech industry.

And last week it collapsed in a matter of days and was taken over by the government.

This is not some random little bank that banked a few small businesses in one town. This

was the 16th biggest bank in the United States that banked lots of really sophisticated

customers in the United States' premier industry. So it's pretty significant.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday. Then on Sunday the government took over another bank,

signature bank, and announced sweeping measures designed to steady the financial system.

So the government really, really, really wants to try to stop this from continuing.

Banking is really a confidence game. Either you believe in the system or you don't believe in

the system. And if everybody decides all at once not to believe in the system, then the system

comes apart. Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate

It's Monday March 13th.

Coming up on the show, can the government contain a banking crisis?

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Before last week, you probably never heard of Silicon Valley Bank unless you were a startup founder

or a venture capitalist. So Silicon Valley Bank goes back to 1983. It was a fairly conventional

bank. It was just very focused on the business of working with startups and venture capitalists.

...