One thing you know, if we're leading with the bell, that's usually not good news when it comes to the economy.

Welcome to meet the press. Now. I'm Chuck Todd. It's been a busy day in general.

We have a busy 2024 political day. We're going to get to that in a moment. But there's a reason we began with the closing bell, the breaking news in the economic sector. You're looking, that was the closing bell. Markets reacted today to the biggest U.S. banking collapse in more than a decade. Markets just closed. They were down.

All the major indices fell by more than 1%.

The tech-heavy NASDAQ closed down by more than 1.5%.

Why did NASDAQ take a hit worse?

Because the Silicon Valley Bank had to be shut down by regulators, despite emergency

efforts by the tech bank, to stay afloat.

This is the nation's 16th

largest bank, has more than $200 billion in assets, and it makes it the single largest U.S. bank

failure since the 2008 financial crisis. And it's the second biggest bank failure ever.

Cecilia Rouse, whose chair of the White House's Council of Economic

Advisors, told reporters last hour that the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was closely

monitoring the situation. The White House was confident that the bank's collapse would not

have a ripple effect throughout the banking system or the tech sector.

Our banking system is fundamentally different because of the changes that we put in place in 2008.

For example, they have to hold more capital.

They undergo stress tests.

So we know that we had to build more resilience into our baking system, which allows it to withstand these kinds of shocks.

So I do have faith that we have the tools for this sector and for our regulators to be able to

absorb. But, you know, this is what we know today, but we do know that our banking system

is in a fundamentally different place. It's important, she said today, because there's a lot of

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