Regarding the March 14 editorial “The Valley’s absurd charade”:
Why is it that all banks are not required to maintain the same minimum capital adequacy ratio?
Small and midsize banks pose the same risk of collapse as large ones. Their executives and boards have the same fiduciary responsibility to properly manage customers’ deposits. And in the event of a collapse, those small-bank customers bear the same risk of loss as large-bank depositors.
In addition, bankers and business leaders cannot have it both ways. They howl about “government overreach” and yet are the first ones to demand government and taxpayer bailouts for collapses caused by their own recklessness and hubris.
Maureen Clyne, Alexandria
Mr. Cuban, whose portfolio companies have $8 million to $10 million in Silicon Valley Bank, usually demands an ownership share of the start-up businesses he invests in. What would he do if he were the Federal Reserve and a bank failed, leaving billions of dollars of uninsured deposits at risk of being lost? I suspect that he would demand an ownership share of the failed bank before he put in a single dollar that he wasn’t legally obligated to provide.
If a bank cannot survive without additional cash or guarantees from the Fed, then the Fed should bail it out, extend the guarantees and demand a 50 percent ownership share of that bank and half of its future profits. The people’s representatives in Congress can dedicate these assets to start a big fund that gives every American child an investment account that they can cash in when it’s time for them to start college. Socialism, you say? Bank bailouts with government dollars are already socialism for the rich. It’s time for some socialism for ordinary citizens.