William Isaac, who is a former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), believes that more bank failures are coming, and soon. It will all be a part of the fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday.

2nd Biggest Bank Failure In U.S. History: “On The Verge Of A Much Bigger Collapse Than 2008”

If this continues to spiral, and the masses start to panic, a big crash could occur.

SVB, the 16th largest bank in the United States and the go-to institution for tech startups for nearly 40 years, collapsed on Friday after spooked customers began a run on their deposits. That run began a downward spiral that ultimately led to the FDIC taking control of the bank to figure out how to pay back its roughly $150 million in uninsured deposits. SVB’s swift downfall was the largest for such an institution since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Isaac, who served as chair for the FDIC under Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985, told Politico on Sunday that he expects more bank failures soon, though could not guess how many and how big they would be. “There’s no doubt in my mind: There’s going to be more. How many more? I don’t know. How big? I don’t know,” Isaac said. “Seems to me to be a lot like the 1980s.”

Politico also quoted Sheila Bair, who served as FDIC chair from 2006 to 2011, overseeing bank failures and other tumults during the 2008 global financial crisis. Bair said that SVB’s situation should be a “wake-up call” to other banks about what factors might lead to failure, beyond the quality of its loans and assets. SVB’s customers being so focused on one industry is considered a rarity among banks, and experts believe it would not have otherwise failed without the run on deposits.

“This is another wake-up call: you need to look at liabilities too,” Bair said. “Institutional money seeking [higher] yield is not stable.”

It’s a wake-up call, for sure. We should all be waking up to the horrific system that’s been designed to control us through panic and fear.