The Good evening. It's Monday, March 13th. Welcome to a new episode of System Update,

our live nightly show that airs every Monday through

Friday at 7 PM Eastern exclusively here on Rumbull, the free speech alternative to YouTube.

Tonight, the U.S. government took very aggressive action over the weekend to save the

vast wealth of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank.

That 40-year-old institution had become rather unstable of late as a result of rising interest rates

that they failed to anticipate and investments in the kind of long-term high-risk, high-reward

vehicles responsible for the 2008 financial crisis such as mortgage-backed securities.

Late last week, the bank's depositors, composed of both wealthy tech investors, as well as startup companies with substantial venture capital began getting somewhat

nervous about the bank's ability to cover deposits above the $250,000 level, the

amount which the FDIC ensures for every account,

and that worry very quickly, in a matter of less than two days,

turned into full-blown panic and then a bank run

that prevented the bank from even coming close to finding the liquidity to cover the mountain of

withdrawals and transfer requests that poured in from very panicky depositors.

Over the weekend, at the urging of some of the most prominent Silicon

Valley venture capitalists, the Biden Treasury Department announced that the U.S. government

would ensure that all depositors would be made made whole no matter how much in excess of the

250,000 limit their balance was. That move surprisingly has provoked a

very vitriolic debate

between people like on the one hand,

our guest tonight, Matt Stoller,

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