@caleb Ultimately shareholders of banks are going to eat the risks.
My opinion on the failures thus far is this:
SVB & Signature Bank were so big that there were only three potential buyers: USB, PNC, and TFC. The regulators don't want the big 4 to get bigger and they were too big of a fish for anyone else to swallow.
Those three likely said no to taking on SVB's loan book, which are loans USB and TFC refuse to do and PNC dabbles in.
None of the three would touch Signature Bank's crypto / know your customer risks.
I'm surprised that Signature Bank was essentially taken out back and shot with a $4.5bil market cap on Friday instead of being told to raise equity, but it may have been making a statement to everyone else about dabbling in crypto.
I expect down rounds of equity issuances, not failures for the likes of FRC, PACW, and WAL. They have more traditional lending books (valuable) and more traditional deposit bases (more valuable). The executives probably choose a down round instead of selling because they keep their cushy jobs with the former. If the FDIC determines them too big of a risk to stay afloat, they'll be merged into another bank. Those three are also small enough to have more suiters than the three I listed above.
Disclaimer: I made purchases today based off this opinion of both FRC and PACW preferred shares. I won't touch the common, but love the risk/reward bet right now in the preferreds. It's a 50-70% chance of failure and I think the odds are in the 10-20% range. YMMV, I'm also already FIREd and it's only a percent or two of net worth at risk.