Bank fail: How rising interest rates paved the way for Silicon Valley Bank's collapse

The banking sector has been hammered by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. But the bank had money stashed into what's supposed to be the safest asset around. What happened? (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

Risk. It's tricky. Try to avoid one set of risks, you can just end up exposing yourself to another. That's what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.

"Silicon Valley Bank was a very good bank... until it wasn't," says Mark Williams, professor of finance at Boston University and a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve.