I don't like the way the fear button is pushed ('jobs at risk') because start-ups should not be so dependent on a single bank, especially not start-ups funded by wealthy backers such as YC. It also would be good to know how much of YCs own funds are in SVB deposits to see whether or not they are arguing for 'others' when in fact they are arguing for themselves.

In Europe a bank account does not have an unlimited guarantee and it is up to you as the depositor to make yourself aware of this and to ensure that you have your funds stored in such a way that a single bank going out of business isn't going to kill you. I have my funds spread out over multiple such accounts 'just in case'. I've always done this since well before the financial crash. The problem for very large depositors is that they will have more money than it makes sense to spread around, the guarantee here is for up to 100K euros so if you have a million to deposit then that would mean 10 bank accounts. This isn't really workable for really large amounts.

All that said: banks falling over is bad for society. The FED making SVB depositors whole puts the burden on all of society and this in turn is yet another form of externalization: those people who would never even get near $100k worth of deposits are now expected to pay along to bail out parties that are much wealthier than they are in order to avoid a knock on effect that might be even worse for society.

There is something fundamentally broken here but I can't put my finger on it.