In the exact same place we’ve been for the last 15 years (much longer, really, because the last crisis wasn’t the start of this, either), between the time the systemic risk exception was announced for three large banks, and all the bank failures in between where it was not invoked.

A place where the FDIC guarantees $250K per depositor per ownership category per bank but tries to facilitate takeovers that protect uninsured balances and where, with the Treasury and President, might protect something more, if the conditions for the systemic risk exception are determined to apply.

The systemic risk exception has existed since at least 1950, was invoked as far back as 1980, and was easier to invoke (the FDIC could do it on its own) prior to 1991. It was also less necessary prior to 1991, since the FDIC could facilitate a sale even when doing so was more expensive than a payout of only the insured accounts until the least cost rule was put into the law in 1991, and in fact, since the 1960s, the general policy was to, where possible, facilitate a buyout by another bank to protect all depositors even when the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund was greater than a payout of insured balances.

The arguments about the use of full-protection via the systemic risk exception for SVB fundamentally changing things is just, completely, historically ignorant.