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\n\tThe Federal Reserve was the primary regulator of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose back-to-back collapses sparked panic in financial markets and concerns about cascading impacts on the U.S. economy.\n<\/p>
\n\tBut despite immediate questions about the possible supervisory failures that allowed the banks' crises to fester, Fed Chair Jerome Powell personally intervened over the weekend to block any mention of regulatory slipups in a joint statement on the federal government's response to the situation.\n<\/p>
\nThe New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> late Thursday that some Biden administration officials \"wanted to include that lapses in bank regulation and supervision had contributed to the problems that helped fell\" Silicon Valley Bank, whose collapse marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.\n<\/p> \n\tBut Powell, an ex-investment banker originally nominated by former President Donald Trump, \"pushed to take the line on regulation out of the statement because he wanted to focus on the actions being taken to shore up the financial system,\" according to the \n\tTimes<\/em>, which cited an unnamed person familiar with the matter. \n\tThe resulting \n\tstatement<\/a> issued Sunday by the Fed, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appeared to conform to Powell's demand, not mentioning what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and watchdogs have described<\/a> as glaring failures in supervision by the central bank.\n<\/p> \n\tThe joint statement vaguely highlights \"reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry\"\u2014but neglects to mention that the Fed and Congress rolled back some of those rules in subsequent years, decisions that experts say set the stage for SVB and Signature Bank's collapse.\n<\/p> \n\t \"That sounds a lot like putting the institutional interests of Fed and personal interests of the chair above financial stability,\" Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) \n\tsaid<\/a> in response to news of Powell's intervention, which\u2014according to<\/a> The American Prospect<\/em>'s David Dayen\u2014ended up delaying the release of the statement for \"an indeterminate period of time.\"\n<\/p> \n\tDayen also reported Friday that the Fed \"tried to influence\" President Joe Biden's statement on the bank failures and \n\tbailout<\/a> that followed.\n<\/p> \n\tJeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, \n\twrote<\/a> on Twitter that \"Biden should have never renominated Powell,\" calling the Fed chair \"an abomination.\"\n<\/p>\n