The public widely resented government bailouts for banks “too big to fail” during the Great Recession. Politicians across the political spectrum, from Elizabeth Warren to Donald Trump, howled with outrage and accused officials of rescuing elites while households and small businesses were left to fend for themselves.

Those policies helped birth the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements and even gave fuel to Trump’s successful run for the White House, The Wall Street Journal said.

In the current banking fiasco, federal officials have chosen to rescue depositors but not the banks themselves or their investors, not only avoiding the word “bailout” but also framing current policies in ways that avoid suggesting the term.

“Organizations that can’t manage risk should be allowed to fail and taxpayers should not be forced to bail out the well-connected and the wealthy,” David Macintosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said in a statement following the newest bank bust. 

“This is an important point: no losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” president Joe Biden said in responding to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank two weeks ago and what seems to be the approaching collapse of First Republic Bank.

However, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has vowed that all depositors with SVB and Signature—even those with accounts above the $250,000 limit of federal insurance—will be made whole.

In stressing that taxpayers will not pay depositors stranded by the banks’ implosion, Biden noted that the FDIC will collect fees from banks that will reimburse those depositors.

Funds raised from the sale of the failed banks’ assets also will flow to depositors, the FDIC has said.

“The shareholders and bondholders of the two banks that failed were completely wiped out,” Art Hogan, chief strategist with B. Riley Wealth Management, noted in an ABC TV interview. “From that standpoint, I would say this is not a bailout.”

Neither Biden nor the FDIC mentioned that the U.S. Federal Reserve has set up a separate loan fund to keep money flowing to banks that might find themselves in trouble if depositors lose faith and make a run on them.

Those loans, ultimately, would come from taxpayers.

The Fed “does not anticipate it will be necessary to draw on these backstop funds,” it said in a 13 March statement. However, more than $11 billion had been borrowed within days of the credit line’s opening. 

In his comments, Biden highlighted the Trump administration’s abolition of portions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that lifted restrictions on thousands of smaller banks.

Eliminating those protections, a move that drew bipartisan support, has led to the current bank failures, critics charge.

“Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is the predictable and direct outcome of a furious 2018 effort by bank lobbyists to evade basic oversight, transparency, and financial stability in favor of profit,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement last week.

TREND FORECAST: Our TOP TREND 2023: ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT — NEW POLITICAL PARTIES, while taking root across the globe, is on the near horizon in America. As economic conditions deteriorate and the rich-get-richer while everyone else is getting poorer… get ready for new anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-immigration, anti-tax political parties to spring up.

Political movements that work toward spreading peace, prosperity, and political freedom of the people—instead of enrichment for the economic elitists and government “authorities”—will find mass support.