WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for more U.S. deposits to be covered by federal insurance and demanding government probes into whether lax regulation fueled this month’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
The comments this weekend from the Massachusetts Democrat, a frequent critic of the finance industry, raise the political pressure in an already tense situation. American officials are racing to calm nerves over the financial health of other U.S. midsize banks.
“I think that lifting the FDIC insurance cap is a good move,” Warren, who’s a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a CBS News interview on Sunday, referring to the deposit insurance administered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. A day earlier, she demanded that several inspectors general look into causes of the banks’ failures and if regulatory missteps played a role.
