they figured out maybe that bank could be in trouble, boy did they run, and they ran quickly; no loyalty whatsoever. They turned around over the weekend and were calling everybody; some called me: “We need a bailout. We need a bailout. We need a bailout.” They were getting no sympathy from me. I don’t know what they thought I was going to do about it; I haven’t been in office for quite some time. But they got the bailout. I don’t agree with it but I certainly understand why regulators made the decision to do that because there has been some growing instability, especially with our regional banks. They were worried about other uninsured deposits, and there was another bank that was ...and I’ve tried to live by that in my government service: that the role of government is not to protect the rich and powerful. That the role of the government is to protect people who can’t protect themselves.
using to make payroll, and it was a worthwhile thing to protect those. The vast majority of those billions that were protected, that was not the category that they fulfilled and those very sophisticated rich people still wanted their bailouts. And even as they ran that bank – and this is all based on public reports and people I’ve talked to – the bank was giving them a sweet deal as near as I could tell. They were getting high yields on the deposits. They were getting generous credit terms. Financing to a venture capital start-up is pretty risky, and a lot of banks won’t even do it; national banks aren’t allowed to do it, so the bank customers were getting a sweet deal. But once
2023 ANNUAL REPORT 13
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