SVB failed because it was a perfect example of greedy capitalism. They took risks, they exploited GOP-led deregulation, and they gambled ineptly with other people's money. The GOP, their obscenely wealthy donors and their fawning sold-out servants, will do or say anything to make it look like it wasn't what it was; greedy capitalism in action. If they could, they would blame it on trans people, or whoever is the right-wing scapegoat of the day. This was greed, plain and simple. Greedy bankers bought off politicians, mostly republicans but others, like Synema, to weaken regulations put in place to prevent another financial meltdown. The bribes paid off, they made a fortune, got their bonuses, and like the last time, will probably not pay a price for this travesty! Our system continues to serve the wealthiest and pillage the rest of us, and that is exactly how the GOP and their donors want it!

Silicon Valley Bank didn't fail because it's "woke" https://link.motherjones.com/view/5eb477beb01fd7378a70b24cicnru.1jsi/da299f9e

#GreedKills
#GreedKillsTheEconomy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPLovesTheGreedy

"Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday amid a bank run. The reasons are complex, even for those well-versed in the jargon of finance. (I am not.) The gist is that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in hopes of taming inflation. That requires banks to pay higher rates on their deposits. But since SVB's assets (like loans) were issued at the lower rates, they earn far less. At the same time, the higher rates from the Fed caused Treasury bonds to go down in value. SVB over-diversified on Treasury bonds and had to sell them at a lower value, leaving the bank without enough capital, as Michael Hitzlik explained in the Los Angeles Times.

So, you can blame increased interest rates. You can blame deregulation for allowing SVB to act as more of an investment tool than a bank, which made it particularly susceptible to a bank run. You can blame the very idea that this is how financialized capitalism works. You can even maybe blame Peter Thiel? Or, if you choose not to attempt to understand what happened, you can blame some DEI programs and say the word "woke" a lot.

"I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. "I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission." The idea, as a former Trump economist said on Fox News, is that SVB over-invested in green-energy products, leading to its doom.

"SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedent over common sense business practices," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, not mentioning the role his father played in loosening bank regulations.

Investor Andy Kessler, in a Wall Street Journal opinion column, went so far as to suggest that SVB's focus on diversity and inclusion was somehow responsible for the bank's collapse:

SVB was regulated like a bank but looked more like a money-market fund. Then there’s this: In its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides 91% of their board being independent and 45% women, they also have “1 Black,” “1 LGBTQ+” and “2 Veterans.” I’m not saying 12 white men would have avoided this mess, but the company may have been distracted by diversity demands.

This is, of course, nonsense. As my colleague Michael Mechanic explained in a newsletter last week, American conservatives (and some Democrats) have been loath to accept any whiff of progressivism in our financial institutions. That's why the Senate blocked a Labor Department rule that would have allowed retirement fund managers to let clients invest in ESG funds—those that consider environmental and social factors. And it's also why they choose to focus not on Silicon Valley greed or lax government regulations, but on the bank's stated support of LGBTQ causes.

Do you think Bear Stearns was "distracted by diversity demands"? Lehman Brothers? Bailey Building and Loan from It's a Wonderful Life? Give me a break."

The wealthy, corporations and the GOP have worked hand-in-hand to rig the economy against average Americans and in their favor over the last 50 plus years. Monopolies dominate many industries and they are responsible for much of our inflation. This costs workers and the economy billions of dollars every year in needlessly high prices like the exorbitant costs for pharmaceuticals that no other country has to pay. Their greed has made them very wealthy and successful but at the expense of the rest of us. Too often our government doesn't serve or protect us, it only works for corporations and the wealthy. Biden is aggressively trying to change that, but corporate interests are entrenched in our agencies and laws and are fighting him, and us, every step of the way. Knowledge and outrage about this situation can help tilt this in our favor. Great Article!

A Pitched Battle on Corporate Power - Biden’s expansive executive order seeks to restore competition in the economy. It’s been a long, slow road to get the whole government on board—but there are some formidable gains.
The American Prospect https://prospect.org/economy/2023-01-25-pitched-battle-corporate-power/

#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedKillsTheEconomy
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#MonopoliesKillTheEconomy
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden signed one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy since FDR. It was not legislation: His signature climate and health law would take another year to gestate. This was a request that the government get into the business of fostering competition in the U.S. economy again.

Flanked by Cabinet officials and agency heads, Biden condemned Robert Bork’s pro-corporate legal revolution in the 1980s, which destroyed antitrust, leading to concentrated markets, raised prices, suppressed wages, stifled innovation, weakened growth, and robbing citizens of the liberty to pursue their talents. Competition policy, Biden said, “is how we ensure that our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism; it’s about capitalism working for people.”

The executive order outlines a whopping 72 different actions, but with a coherent objective. It seeks to revert government’s role back to that of the Progressive and New Deal eras. Breaking up monopolies was a priority then, complemented by numerous other initiatives—smarter military procurement, common-carrier requirements, banking regulations, public options—that centered competition as a counterweight to the industrial leviathan.

It’s been a year and a half since Biden signed the executive order; its architect, Tim Wu, has since rotated out of government. Not all of the 72 actions have been completed, though many have. Some were instituted rapidly; others have been agonizing. Some agencies have taken the president’s urging to heart; others haven’t. But the new mindset is apparent.

Seventeen federal agencies are named specifically, tasked with writing rules, tightening guidelines, and ramping up enforcement.
...
The small team that envisioned and executed the competition order put the weight of the presidency behind it, delivering a loud message to return to the fight against concentrations of power. It’s alarming and maybe a little disconcerting that you have to use a high-level form of peer pressure to flip the ship of state. But that battleship is starting to change course.
...
THE EXECUTIVE ORDER’S PREAMBLE VALIDATES Khan and Kanter’s aggressive perspective on competition policy, hinting at the practices of previous reform eras. For example, antitrust enforcement since the Bork revolution of the 1980s has relied solely on one criterion: Does an anti-competitive action explicitly harm consumer welfare, defined as higher prices. But the preamble to Biden’s order stresses the plight of workers in a concentrated economy, which impedes the ability “to bargain for higher wages and better work conditions.” Though the consequences of too few buyers in an economy (monopsony) had been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, presidential-level discussion of monopsony and monopoly in the same breath was novel.
...
Perhaps the most quietly radical passage of the preamble states that “the United States retains the authority to challenge transactions whose previous consummation was in violation” of the antitrust laws, citing the Standard Oil breakup of 1911 as an example. Retroactive merger review had essentially been abandoned since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s. “We wanted to bring it back to the mainstream of conversation,” Wu said."