WASHINGTON — Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is working to find a buyer for Silicon Valley Bank and urged the U.S. government to step in and guarantee all of the bank’s deposits.
Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about the option of a private sector bank buying SVB’s assets, Khanna said: “That would be the ideal situation and our delegation that talked to the FDIC last night made that clear. That’s what we urged them to work on; they said they’re working on it.”
Khanna, who represents the California district where Silicon Valley Bank is based, called on regulators to lift the $250,000 federal cap on deposit insurance for SVB while finding a solution to the bank’s liquidity squeeze that sent it into FDIC receivership.
“It’s not going to cost taxpayers money, because if you look at the financials of SVB — they have the assets, they don’t have the liquidity,” he said. “Right now, the key thing is for the depositors to have access to those accounts. Those assets still have value, we need the liquidity.”
