Re Bear Sterns, there were lots of political reasons it was allowed to fail while others were protected. If I remember right something about them not helping with the Long Term Capital Management collapse for example. There will have been people who had the opportunity to help SVB and collectively decided it was better to let it fail. It will be interesting to understand the decisions that were made when the dust settles
They did intervene with Bear. The JPM acquisition came with all sorts of backstops and guarantees from the Fed. Lehman was the one where they didn't intervene, which is why there was no acquisition.