It will be yet another bailout for failed bankers. It will simply encourage yet more risk-taking in the City. It only impacts a tiny number of tech companies and venture capital funds, and anyway we can’t afford it. As the London arm of Silicon Valley Bank – which has gone spectacularly bust over the weekend – is closed down by the Bank of England, there will be plenty of pressure on the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt not to offer any extra money to its depositors beyond what they are entitled to under the existing compensation scheme. The trouble is, that would be a big mistake. If necessary it will have to be rescued.
A full-blown banking crisis was probably not what Hunt was hoping for as the backdrop to his first Budget this week. And yet that is what he will have to confront.
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