House lawmakers tore into top U.S. bank regulators Wednesday, questioning their competency and saying examiners were asleep at the wheel, at a second day of congressional hearings this week about how Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed practically overnight on March 10 and March 12.”We need competent financial supervisors, but Congress can’t legislate competence,” House Financial Services Chairman Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told top officials at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and FDIC at the beginning the hearing.related investing newsThe committee’s ranking member, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., questioned whether the repeated warnings regulators delivered to SVB about its balance sheet and long-term interest risks were sufficient.”The light touch cautions from the Fed to SVB management are clearly not what Congress intended for bank supervision,” said Waters.Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., put it more bluntly. “It seems like [SVB] blew you guys off, and you didn’t do anything.”Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michael Barr did not disagree with this assessment. “I expect that we’re going to find that we need to have more of an emphasis on supervisors using the tools they have more promptly, and putting in mitigations in place more promptly when th …
