The Federal Reserve on Friday blamed the deregulatory zeal that occurred during the Trump era for contributing to the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, appearing to take a clear stand on an acrimonious policy divide in Washington.

Amid the turmoil that Silicon Valley Bank¡¯s implosion unleashed on the financial system last month, some Republicans and industry advocates have argued strenuously that a 2018 roll-back of post-financial-crisis safeguards was not to blame.

But the Fed¡¯s searing 100-page postmortem says bipartisan legislation in 2018 loosened post-financial crisis safeguards, undermining oversight by hindering the work of bank supervisors and encouraging the capital weakness that ultimately proved fatal to SVB.