The Fed bails out politics, too

Anyone who moves in the United States outside of the big cities will often see branches of the main bank Wells Fargo, which operates as a kind of giant savings bank. Otherwise, large financial groups such as JP Morgan and Citigroup do not play a major role in the region, and Bank of America is still represented in most of it.

In fact, the United States Deposit Insurance System (FDIC) still has about 4,700 affiliated institutions, even though many banks have closed down over the years. Some of these banks are small with few employees. But mid-size regional banks are also important, including the recently shuttered Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and San Francisco’s First Republic Bank, which is being bailed out through a joint effort by the big banks in cooperation with the Federal Reserve (FED).