Silicon Valley, once the underdog, is now too big to fail

An industry built on risk-taking, which made mountains of money when those risks paid off, has just been reminded of what happens when they don’t. And the answer, once again, is: Someone else pays the price.

On Sunday, the U.S. government stepped in to backstop depositors in Silicon Valley Bank when no one else would. The move came after venture capitalists panicked last week and advised their tech-startup clients to pull money out, sparking a bank run that led to the second-largest bank collapse in the country’s history. And it followed a weekend of pleading from industry leaders who warned that if the government didn’t ride to the rescue, the entire start-up ecosystem would be devastated.