ISMS 9: Saving Silicon Valley Bank Brings New Risks

<h2>The Silicon Valley Bank crisis started when the US government shut down its economy</h2><p>The Silicon Valley Bank crisis started when the US government shut down the economy from 2020 to 2021.</p><p>Let’s take a step back to January 29th, 2020, when President Donald Trump announced a White House Coronavirus Response task force with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, and Deborah Brix as coordinator.</p><p>The decision to shut down the economy originated from this body but was ultimately implemented by President Trump, members of congress, and eventually President Joe Biden. This decision was truly the worst decision I have ever seen a government make in my lifetime.</p><h2>Businesses and individuals saw their income collapse</h2><p>During that time, businesses and individuals saw their revenues collapse and could not pay the costs necessary to sustain their businesses and livelihood.</p><p>The US government then came up with various programs to distribute money to these struggling businesses and individuals. Unfortunately, the government did not have this money to distribute.</p><p>As we all learned in political science 101, the source of any government funds, of course, comes from its citizens, but in this case, citizens and businesses were reeling from the government’s shutdown of the economy and hence had no money.</p><h2>The US government had to borrow money</h2><p>So the only choice the government had was to borrow money. But the US Treasury department could not borrow from the population as citizens were in dire straits. Usually, the US government would be able to borrow from foreigners; however, as other countries were suffering and for various geopolitical reasons, foreigners didn’t buy much US government debt.</p><p>In fact, in 2014, foreigners owned US$6.2trn of US Treasury Department bonds; five years later, in 2019, they only held slightly more at US$6.8trn. Throughout the crisis, the US Treasury Department could only get about one trillion do