-The Biden administration
moved quickly to stem the fallout
from the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank,
which has put a spotlight on efforts
by the Trump administration to weaken financial rules that
could've prevented the crisis. For more on this,
it's time for "A Closer Look." ♪♪
[ Cheering and applause ] As you may have heard by now,
financial markets and the banking system
were roiled on Friday after the sudden disintegration
of... ...which largely served venture capitalists
and tech startups. To many analysts
and finance gurus, the collapse almost seemed
to come out of nowhere and it happened very fast. -Silicon Valley Bank
collapsed today after failing
to raise enough money to end its capital crisis. California regulators
shut down the bank and put it in control
of the FDIC. -Silicon Valley Bank becoming the second largest bank failure
in U.S. history. -SVB, the 16th largest bank
in the U.S., with $175 billion in deposits, is now the biggest American bank
to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. Its customers
are primarily businesses and investors
in the tech sector. -The swift collapse
of Silicon Valley Bank is the second largest financial
failure in U.S. history and it took only 48 hours
to unfold. -Man, you got to give it
to Silicon Valley. They know how to move fast
and break things. [ Laughter ]
Forty-eight hours! They basically Amazon Prime'd
a bank collapse. [ Laughter ]
And, knowing Silicon Valley,
I wouldn't be surprised if some tech startup
comes along, promising even faster
bank collapses. "It's called... You just download the app, [ Laughter ]
press a button,
and watch as all your money is instantly flushed
down a digital toilet. Here, I'll show you." [ Toilet flushes ] [ Laughter ] "Honey, did you just lose
the kids' college money?" Yes, but I got an NFT
of a cool plunger in sunglasses, so win-win. [ Laughter ] Look, I don't want
to be a doomer, but situations like this
are exactly why I keep all the money
right here in the desk drawer. What?! Where the hell did
all my money go?! -I don't know, Seth.
It's a mystery. -Son of a gun. [ Laughter ] Wally, did you steal
all my savings? -What?!
No! I took the under on slaps
at the Oscars last night and won big!
-Alright. [ Laughter ] The Treasury Department
and Federal Reserve quickly responded to the news by guaranteeing all deposits
at SVB, which we'll get to in a minute, but the news also gave us a real
contrast in leadership styles from the current president
and the guy who preceded him. Joe Biden delivered remarks
from the White House, in an attempt to calm nervous
markets and worried Americans after the collapse of the
country's 16th largest bank, although he ended his remarks
on an odd note. -Today, thanks
to the quick action of my administration
over the past few days, Americans can have confidence
that the banking system is safe. Your deposits will be there
when you need them. Small businesses
across the country, that deposit accounts
at these banks can breathe easier,
knowing they'll be able to pay their workers
and pay their bills. And their hardworking employees
can breathe easier as well. All customers who had deposits
in these banks can rest assured. Rest assured
they'll be protected and they'll have access
to their money, as of today. Every American
should feel confident their deposits will be there,
if and when they need them. Look, the bottom line is this -- Americans can rest assured
that our banking system is safe. Your deposits are safe. Thank you, God bless you,
and may God protect our troops. See you in California. -"See you in California"? [ Laughter ] If I was Silicon Valley Bank,
I would not like hearing that. [ Laughter ] "Good news --
he bailed us out. Bad news -- he's on his way." [ Laughter ] Biden's like a grandfather
telling a principal -- [ As Biden ]
You can rest assured
that my grandson has pulled his last fire alarm. For one thing, he's not going
to be able to lift his arms after he's done
cleaning the garage! [ Laughter ]
Grandkid's sitting there,
mouthing to the principal, [ Whispering ]
"Don't let this man
take me home with him." [ Laughter ] Biden also made a point
of reassuring Americans that taxpayers would not pay
for the bailout and that, while depositors
at SVB would be protected, investors would not. -No losses will be borne
by the taxpayers. Let me repeat that -- no losses will be borne
by the taxpayers. Investors in the banks
will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk and, when the risk
didn't pay off, investors lose their money. -Alright, seems fair. Investors take risks,
knowing full well there's a chance
they can lose all their money, and that's what happened. -Hey, Seth, um,
can I borrow a few bucks? -I'm sorry.
I don't have any on me. -Damn it! I shouldn't have
stolen all your money. [ Laughter and applause ]
-So it was you! -Of course it was me. I invested it all
in Silicon Valley Bank. And I bet someone would slap
Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars. Damn you, Jimmy
and your unslappable charm! [ Laughter ] -So, Wally gets two cameras,
now? [ Laughter and applause ] [ Cheering ] Great. Oh, good, I'm glad
you're so happy for him. [ Whistling ] Anyway, so, as you heard there,
Biden used words like safe, confidence,
and rest assured, over and over. And, while that's absolutely
the right thing for a president to do
in this situation, generally speaking, I've never
personally felt assured when a president has said
the words rest assured. [ Laughter ]
Unless it was Obama. He was the only president
who seemed calm, while also making you feel
like a dork for being worried. [ As Obama ]
Now, I know some of you are
running around saying, "Hey! My money's gone. [ Laughter ] I, uh, can't get my money. Well, uh...listen up. You all need to chill
the [bleep] out. [ Laughter and applause ] He'd be so cool about it,
you'd start thinking, "Yeah, I don't need money,
especially since I got Plungie. [ Laughter and applause ]
He's got a pirate hat now. Pirate hat doubles the value." [ Laughter ]
In fact, Biden was so concerned
with projecting calm that even the way he entered
the room for his speech was very low-maintenance. There was no pomp, no fanfare. He didn't even have any staff
walk in with him. He just ambled in on his own,
closed the door, and shuffled over to the podium, like he was your next-door
neighbor popping in for a visit. [ Laughter and applause ]
-[ Mumbling ] [ Laughter and applause ] I love that little shuffle step, like a high school
history teacher who's five minutes late
for class. [ Laughter ]
"Like, oh, hey,
everybody's here. Sorry, gang.
Big day in the teacher's lounge. Mrs. Balducci's husband left her and, based on how long it took
her to tell us the story, I might understand why." [ Laughter ] There's just no staff
around him, no presidential fanfare. He looked like he just walked
out of the bathroom and now has
to improvise a speech. [ Laughter ]
"Uh, first things first, uh... don't go in there." [ Laughter ] Nonetheless,
Biden did pretty much exactly what you'd want a president
to do in this situation -- take immediate action, reassure Americans
everything will be okay. Much like the message former
President Donald Trump delivered on his social media website
over the weekend. Trump is clearly aware
of the fact that, sometimes -- sometimes -- he has the tendency
to overreact, which could panic
nervous Americans and send shock waves through the
financial markets for no reason. So, instead of freaking
everyone out, Trump projected calm
and confidence when he wrote this very reassuring message
in all-caps -- [ Laughter ] I mean, credit to him for not
ending it with... [ Laughter and applause ] Trump isn't just the guy
who shouts fire in a crowded theater.
He's the guy who lights the match, pours the
gasoline, and screams -- [ As Trump ]
There's a fire and there's
no point in leaving because I-I chained the exits. [ Laughter ] Fire. We hate fire,
don't we, folks? [ Laughter ]
Very nasty. Not nice. Not nice, the fire. I remember one time I was
in the Oval Office. I had a guy come up to me,
big guy, strong guy, bolts in his neck...
[ Laughter ] ...tears pouring down his green,
monstrous face, and he said to me, he said,
"Mr. Trump, fire bad." [ Laughter ] And I said, "It's so true,
Frankenstein. ...'s monster." [ Laughter ]
Now, look. [ Laughter and applause ] Very important. [ Cheering and whistling ] A lot of people at home
right now going, "Oh, finally!" [ Laughter ] Now, look, there's a lot to say about what happened
to Silicon Valley Bank. There's the fact that its
leaders and lobbyists pushed for more lenient
financial rules. There's the news
that the CEO sold over $3 million in stock just days
before the bank's collapse. And then, of course, there's
the infuriating hypocrisy of all these libertarian
venture capitalist tech bros who routinely rail
against government overreach and preach about the virtues
of decentralizing finance. It turns out, the people who constantly brag
to the rest of us that they're ushering in
a new era of techno utopia without the help
of the government couldn't even manage
their own assets and basically tanked
their own bank by losing their [bleep]
and pulling all their money out. -Bloomberg reported
that billionaire and venture capitalist
Peter Thiel had his companies pull their
funds from SVB this week. Do we know what kind of role
that played in all this? -Well, Peter Thiel is an incredibly influential figure
in Silicon Valley and, right now, there's a lot
of finger-pointing going on about what caused
this bank run on SVB. Peter Thiel,
as reported by Bloomberg, and his Founders Fund pulled
their money out by Thursday and encouraged his companies
to pull their money out as well. Well, word spreads quickly
in the valley, right? You have group chats.
You have Slacks. People are talking and we saw
tens of billions of dollars of money being withdrawn
from SVP, which, basically,
was a kiss of death and caused California regulators
to shut it down. -They basically wrecked
an entire bank via group chat. Before now, the craziest thing
that ever happened in a group chat
was that time Ted Cruz asked his neighbors
to go to Cancún and, instead, they ratted him
out to The New York Times. [ Laughter and applause ] This is why I'm fully
against Slack. We don't use it here
at "Late Night." I mean, we slack just fine
without the help from an app. [ Laughter ] In fact,
we don't have any method of centralized communication
from our workflow. We just have one giant bullpen,
like an old-fashioned newsroom, and, when we need a clip
or a graphic, someone looks up from their
typewriter and screams -- [ Transatlantic accent ]
Get me a clip of Joe Biden
walking to the podium with a toilet flushing
in the background, stat! [ Toilet flushing ] -[ Mumbling ] [ Laughter, cheering,
and applause ] [ Toilet continues flushing ] [ Laughter ]
The big question now,
of course, is how did this happen
and what could've prevented it? Well, it turns out there's
a little-known bureaucrat at the center of it whose identity
is shrouded in secrecy. And I'm just kidding.
It was Donald Trump. [ Laughter ]
-In 2010, right after
the '08 crash, the Obama administration signed what was known
as the Dodd-Frank Act. In 2018, President Trump
signed a bill that undid a lot
of what Dodd-Frank had been set up to protect banks
from collapsing, just like this. -In 2018, then-President Trump
signed a bill into law which raised the threshold
at which banks would need to undergo stress tests. That number? $250 billion. SVB had just under that amount. -I mean, of [bleep] course
it was Trump. Trying to figure out what went
wrong in this country has turned into a super boring
game of Clue where the weapon is always a pen and the killer is always
Colonel Ketchup. [ Laughter and applause ]
I wouldn't be surprised
if we also find out he rolled back
federal regulations limiting the amount of cocaine
a bear can snort. [ Laughter and ohhs ]
So, basically, Trump repealed
liquidity requirements that would've ensured
midsize banks, like SVB, had enough cash on hand
to weather a storm like this. And, in fairness, you can't blame Trump
for not knowing that. We have a team of researchers who can dig through the weeds
of legislation to find carefully
hidden adjustments to existing safety measures. It's not like Trump loudly
bragged about it over and over again. -You have regulations
that are horrendous. Dodd-Frank is an example
of what we're working on and we're working
on it right now. So, we're going to do a very
major haircut on Dodd-Frank. We expect to
[ Camera shutters clicking ] be cutting a lot
out of Dodd-Frank because, frankly,
I have so many people, friends of mine
that have nice businesses, that can't borrow money,
they just can't get any money because the banks
just won't let them borrow because of the rules
and regulations in Dodd-Frank. We're going to eliminate
wasteful regulations, which we've already done
probably 25%. You can take a look
at Dodd-Frank. For the bankers in the room,
they'll be very happy because we're really doing a major streamlining
and, perhaps, elimination and replacing it
with something else. -He actually said the words,
"For the bankers in the room, they'll be very happy." A true champion
of the forgotten man. [ Laughter ] Who else was in the room
with him? Was it an audience
of literal fat cats? [ Laughter ] [ Transatlantic accent ]
I need a Photoshop
of some fluffy big boys, and I need it yesterday! [ Laughter and applause ]
How could you possibly think rolling back regulations
on banks ten years
after a financial meltdown could ever be a good idea? It's like getting up
at a podium and saying, "We're finally going to ease
the regulatory burden on our nation's cannibals by allowing them
to take off those muzzles. [ Laughter ]
We love our cannibals.
They're job creators and I'm very confident
that they will stick to their promise
of only eating salads. And now -- Oh, no, [bleep],
he's got my arm! [Bleep] [Bleep]
Shoot him! Shoot him!" [ Laughter and applause ] Trump and his cronies gave
Wall Street everything
they wanted, but they still pretend
they're working-class populists by complaining about wokeness
ruining America. In fact, some Republicans
even had the gall to blame this bank collapse
on wokeness. -Are you seeing other CEOs,
besides him, kind of going, "It's time to stop
with the climate change and all the woke issues,
instead of focusing on the main mission
of the bank?" -I mean, you do have
these banks focusing on ESG and on all of these
sort of woke policies. -Nobody in Washington,
at this point, even acknowledges
economics is real, unless it can be tied, somehow,
to climate change or racism. -Everybody is focused
on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating
on the one thing they should, which is shareholder returns. -Now coming out that they were
one of the most woke banks. -I'm sorry,
are you out of your mind? You think Silicon Valley Bank
was woke? Who do you think was running it,
a gender neutral Potato Head? [ Laughter and applause ] [ As Comer ]
I knew this bank was in trouble the first time I saw the CEO
in a bowler hat and lipstick! [ Laughter ] But it wasn't just Trump who supported
rolling back these rules. It's important to note
he also had the support of many Senate Democrats. There were a few, at the time,
who warned that rolling back the rules
was a huge mistake, like Senators Elizabeth Warren
and Bernie Sanders. -Are our memories so short that we have learned nothing
from the 2008 Wall Street crash? Now, ten years later, hoping that we forget all
about that, these large financial
institutions are back again. How pathetic is that? Just yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office
told us that the legislation
we are debating today will, and I quote, "increase the likelihood
that a large financial firm with assets
of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail." [ Laughter ]
-Just as a general rule, if Bernie is warning you
that you're doing something bad, you should at least
give it a second thought. Like I wish Bernie was there
to tell me not to have that third beer when I go out for drinks
on a work night. [ Laughter ]
[ As Sanders ]
Are our memories so short... [ Laughter and applause ] ...that we have learned nothing
from karaoke night?! When you got so drunk,
you fell asleep on the F Train and ended up at Coney Island. [ Laughter and applause ] 99% of the trains go
to [indistinct]. [ Laughter ] [ Cheering, whistling,
and applause ] There are some
obvious lessons here, including the fact that rolling
back those regulations in 2018 was a huge mistake and they
should be restored immediately. Republicans are blaming wokeness
for this bank collapse when, in reality,
the blame rests on a bipartisan push
to deregulate Wall Street and one former president,
in particular, who clearly needs... -A very major haircut. -This -- [ Laughter and applause ] [ Cheering ]
Caught me off-guard.
Caught me off-guard. This has been "A Closer Look." ♪♪
[ Cheering and applause ]
