Abstract: The “lender of last resort” refers to a central bank’s capacity to extend collateralized loans to a solvent bank facing a liquidity crisis, such that a bank’s temporary illiquidity does not cause the bank to fail and catalyze a wider crisis in the banking system (“contagion”). In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) failed after it experienced the largest single-day bank run in U.S. history. Its failure triggered a contagion in the U.S. banking system that brought down two other large banks: Signature and First Republic. Though SVB, Signature, and First Republic each sought emergency liquidity from the Federal Reserve, in no case did the lender of last resort function avert the bank’s collapse. This Article analyzes the SVB crisis to understand why the lender of last resort function failed to fulfill its role of preventing one bank’s liquidity crisis from triggering broader instability in the banking system. Our analysis culminates in eleven recommendations for reforms including operational improvements to expedite emergency lending, rationalized collateral policies that allow solvent banks experiencing a liquidity crisis to borrow without exposing the lender of last resort to credit risk, and recalibrations of the regulatory liquidity and deposit insurance frameworks to better coordinate with the lender of last resort in stabilizing the U.S. banking system. Our Article advances the literature on banking regulation by documenting the facts of a major banking crisis and assessing the response of regulators in order to generate policy recommendations that contribute to the future stability of the banking system.