Warren to SVB CEO: "You lobbied for weaker rules, got what you wanted"
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on March 7. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a letter Tuesday slammed Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker for his role in its collapse, homing in on his support for rollbacks of some Dodd-Frank banking rules.
The big picture: Warren has been outspoken in the aftermath of SVB's collapse, criticizing Trump-era rollbacks to parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, which provided regulatory relief for midsized banks like SVB.
- On Monday, Warren wrote in a New York Times opinion piece urging Congress, the White House and banking regulators to reverse "the dangerous bank deregulation of the Trump era."
- She said that repealing the 2018 legislation "must be an immediate priority for Congress."
Driving the news: Warren on Tuesday focused on Becker's role in the collapse. "You have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives," she said.
- "You lobbied for weaker rules, got what you wanted, and used this opportunity to abdicate your basic responsibilities to your clients and the public – facilitating a near-economic disaster," she wrote.
- Warren in the letter also requested answers from Becker on several questions related to SVB's failure and his "role in the rollback of banking regulations that facilitated this failure."
- Warren requested answers from Becker by March 28.
Zoom in: Warren, one of the key architects of post-2008 reforms, is not alone in calling for large-scale financial reforms in the aftermath of the fall of both SVB and Signature Bank, a key bank for the cryptocurrency industry.
- Many Democrats are zeroing in on the rollback of Dodd-Frank banking rules in 2018.
- "We need to put back in place protections Republicans and big banks gutted in 2018 once the immediate crisis is contained," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told Axios' Andrew Solender.
- Warren in 2018 was a vocal critic of the rollbacks, saying it would bring unnecessary risk to the financial system and harm consumers.
Go deeper... Silicon Valley Bank's political blame game