Days ago bank failures dominated the discussion. But it doesn’t take long for some other Democrat-created “crisis” to remove relevant news from the news cycle.
The strategy of Democrats depends on media malfeasance and subterfuge. Consider what’s kicking what could be the next major financial crisis out of the news cycle: Trump’s imminent arrest. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen.
Does anybody really believe that Trump should be arrested?
A federal court already threw out the case against Trump. And a judge ordered that Stormy Daniels pay Trump $300,000. Pretty clear that Trump is innocent. Why would a billionaire spend $130,000 on a skank porn star? He could have almost any woman. Still, the Manhattan DA who has downgraded 52 percent of felonies to misdemeanors decided to raise a misdemeanor to a felony.
So with Republic Bank on the chopping block and Credit Suisse struggling overseas, we are discussing this nonsense.
As banks began failing under Biden’s policies, he decided to issue a statement to reform banks.
We would not be discussing SVB had Biden not driven inflation to untenable levels. If interest rates had been kept low, SVB wouldn’t have had to sell $21B in treasury bills at a $1.8B loss. Further, if the economy were as robust as Biden claims, then access to available capital would have been much easier; perhaps SVB would have been able to get the $2.5 billion loan they claim to have needed.
But that wouldn’t have solved SVB’s other major problem: SVB management.
The bank made loans to entrepreneurs who mostly created nothing. A lot of Silicon Valley billionaire wannabes who had ideas that most circa 1950s banks would have laughed at.
Take Juicero for instance.
Juicero was a juice company that packed fresh organic fruits, sort of like the coffee packets used in most Keurigs. Juicero claimed their juicer innovated the juicing industry.
The only innovation of the Juicero Press was a Wi-Fi connection. The juicer’s “secret”? Single-serving packets of pre-chopped fruits and vegetables. But that wasn’t the only “innovation”, as the company sold the packets exclusively and by subscription.
From 2014 to 2017, the San Francisco-based firm raised $120 million in startup venture capital from investors.
Now the funny part of the story.
Consumers and journalists discovered that they could create juice just as easily as the Juicero Press by, wait for it… squeezing fruit by hand.
Apparently, Juicero didn’t research the competition–actual fruit potentially squeezed by hand, so the company built its expensive machine.
On September 1, 2017, the company announced that it was suspending sales of the juicer and the packets. They repurchased the product from disgruntled customers and searched for a buyer.
One of the notes I found particularly funny is part of the sale would involve the company’s “intellectual property”.
What intellectual property?
The Guardian wrote that Juicero was an example of “the absurd Silicon Valley startup industry that raises huge sums of money for solutions to non-problems.”
SVB is the Juicero of the Banking Industry
Like Juicero, Democrats implement bad ideas that lead to bad results. But, far too often somebody stands ready to bail them out with taxpayer money. And when the inevitable failure occurs, Democrats claim to fix the very problems they created.
So now Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks. He proposes to have them cut their compensation and prevent them from working in the banking industry.
I can’t say that I disagree. It’s really difficult to lose money in banking, unless you want to. But Biden’s solution is like locking the doors after the thieves have left. Understand what Biden suggested.
The man who gave America the phrase “Bidenflation”, sending the cost of everything soaring while catapulting the rise in interest rates wants to cut the compensation for bank executives. The man who has profited in likely illegal business deals with China wants to hold bank executives accountable. Yes, the man whose lack of financial acumen caused the run on deposits wants another term in office.
Biden wants the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to be able to force the return of compensation paid to executives at a broader range of banks should they fail. Can we apply this to Biden?
SVB and Political Donations
Like FTX, SVB hedged its bets with overwhelming donations to Democrats.
In The New Republic, Timothy Noah notes,
Republicans receive more in political contributions from banks than Democrats, of course. The pattern was particularly lopsided from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. But beginning in 2016, these contributions started evening up, and by 2020 Democrats were getting $26 million to the Republicans’ $29 million. The gap widened again in 2022, but Democrats still got 40 percent of the haul. Fox News reported Wednesday, with great delight, that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature gave more to Democrats than Republicans in recent years. That’s not quite right; in the 2022 cycle, Signature gave Democrats only 40 percent. But, yes, Silicon Valley gave Democrats 77 percent, and in 2020 it gave Democrats an astounding 96 percent, while Signature gave Democrats 59 percent.
96% of its donations were made to Democrats.
But Democrats don’t just hurt Americans when they are receiving money while in office. In the case of Barney Frank, he continued raking in the dough.
After retiring from Congress in 2013, Frank joined the board of Signature Bank. So far Frank has received $2.4 million. This is not a working position, per se, but a board position. Signature Bank used Frank to give the bank credibility–influence peddling–particularly in getting Leftists to support the bank when “woke” policies needed funding.
Hundreds of SVBs and Juiceros exists. And they all have one thing in common. Leftist funders getting their cut of the action, whether the company lives or dies. Talk about the perfect Biden scenario. It would’ve only been a matter of time before Hunter was getting his cut. For the big guy.
