The website of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) still boasts that it claims assets of $212 billion.
SVB is also steeped in wokeness, being a faithful proponent of the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) movement.
On Friday, "oh so woke, oh so green, oh so diverse" SVB "went bust," author and columnist James P. Pinkerton wrote for Breitbart News on Saturday.
When the dust was clearing from what was the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, it was noted that 93 percent of SVB’s $161 billion in deposits are uninsured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which only covers accounts up to $250,000.
"Roku, to name just one whale, had $487 million in Silicon Valley Bank," Pinkerton noted. "So, just for starters, a lot of CFOs — the folks in charge of handling a company’s money — are gonna have some ‘splaining' to do."
It has been known but hidden by Big Media that woke investments are, as Pinkerton pointed out, "not good investments."
Professors at the London School of Economics and Columbia University found that: "ESG funds appear to underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset manager and year, and to charge higher fees. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders."
To sum up, Pinkerton noted: "ESG makes less, costs more, and is a fraud. Of course, if ESG investing only soothed the conscience of gullible trust-funders, it might be okay. But now, as a big ESG bank goes belly up, we see the danger of systemic risk to the whole economy. That’s what happened when bank failures domino-ed back in 1929."
FYI, President Donald Trump predicted a 1929-style crash if Joe Biden got into the White House.
As recently as March 7, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was cheerleading for ESG: “A delayed and disorderly transition to a net-zero economy can lead to shocks to the financial system.”
Pinkerton noted: "Well, we haven’t gotten to net-zero yet—and we never will, especially with China still building coal plants — but we’ve already had a shock to the financial system. ... We can leave for another time speculation about any other legal violations that might have been committed — it is, after all, quite something to blow $212 billion."
An Axios report noted: "If SVB's depositors aren't made whole by Monday morning, hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate deposits are likely to flow out of regional banks. Most would flow into a handful of so-called systemically important banks — if they're too big to fail, they won't fail. Some might go into other ultra-safe havens like Treasury bills."
Hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman predicted that an economic meltdown is looming Monday after Friday’s collapse of SVB:
The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake. By allowing @SVB_Financial to fail without protecting all depositors, the world has woken up to what an uninsured deposit is — an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank. Absent @jpmorgan @citi or… https://t.co/SqdkFK7Fld
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) March 11, 2023
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