Bailing out the Peter Thiel’s of the world is not something that should be swept under the rug.
[1] Somewhat unfairly. I mean, the guy's an outrageous jerk, but from the evidence at hand it genuinely looks like he recognized the problem with their balance sheet before everyone else, got himself out, and told his companies to do the same. And he was right. That's not fraud, that's good faith financial analysis.
To me, it sounds like SVB cut a lot of corners and SV customers enjoyed advantages of some of these cut corners.
I am deeply sympathetic to people who may not get paid for a while, or have their startups go under. That said, there are precise laws covering what the FDIC can and can not do. I think the general public is tired of very connected people and companies getting special treatment.
There is certainly a danger of contagion, of regional banks taking a hit, by being compared to SVB, but that does not change my opinion, and I certainly will not stop doing business with two relatively small Credit Unions in my state.
There's some of this, for sure. But there's an equivalent screeching from the tech finance world[1] demanding a full government guarantee. That ain't happening, and I think it's appropriate for the fed to make that clear.
FWIW: the dirty secret here is likely that there's a bunch of internal dealing going on as regards SVB. They were The Startup Bank for some reason, it's not random. And my guess is that we'll discover that a whole lot of big venture players turn out to be extremely exposed[2] to an SVB failure. A lot of VCs are probably losing their shirts here.
[1] Jason Calacanis's caps lock has been stuck down since Friday.
[2] Or worse. Genuine fraud has turned up in previous FDIC seizures. But no evidence exists right now.