Posted on 03/18/2023 9:10:11 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Is there anything more Soviet than a bank that lends money to companies making things no one wants to buy?
That's the missing puzzle piece on why Silicon Valley Bank went belly up, and Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal has found it: the failure of the bank was premised on ESG, which descended into wokester lending priorities, creating the abnormal conditions that left the bank ripe for a meltdown. Strassel:
Now it's all come down, and wokery is clear as day the big reason.
Most of these companies weren’t filling some vital market need. Rather, as the Journal reported, SVB was beloved for its willingness to offer “banking services to startups that often weren’t profitable, in some cases didn’t have a product, and would otherwise have a hard time getting a line of credit or a loan from a larger bank.” One tech entrepreneur provided law.com a more scathing description of SVB’s products: “They’re basically subprime business loans. You’re talking about companies that have no credit profile, they’re burning cash and are unlikely to raise the same type of capital because of interest rates. . . . It was basically social credit.” What inspires a bank to disregard risk and shower money on products or services that nobody is clamoring to buy? One answer is easy money and misguided regulation, which washed dollars into the economy even as it pushed banks like SVB to load up on sovereign debt, lulled by a Federal Reserve-fed belief that interest rates would stay near zero forever.
The other? Washington handouts, via President Biden’s effort to engineer a climate industry that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
...the bank lent to companies that couldn't sustain themselves without Biden's centrally directed green economy to prop them up.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I worked for a company that poured untold amounts of investor money into all of those. The only time synthetic oil worked was in Nazi Germany and South Africa because of their vast deposits of coal. But almost none of what you listed (and I could add a lot to that list panned out). Instead, we now have the GD goobermint full of really stupid people cramming "climate change" down our throats and leading them to ban NATURAL GAS. I got into the power industry when we were cleaning up real pollutants, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulates. We finished that so now they chase fairy tale "pollutants" like inert CO2.
Our society worked really well up until 30 years ago. Now the nonstop assault on so many fronts simultaneously makes it almost impossible to fight back. The future is really bleak on so many fronts (not the least of which is our abysmal ability to turn out students who can read, write, do math, and think critically).
Your “emerald green” story is an excellent metaphor. I like that. The whole world operates like that now. The whole COVID disaster operated like that. Depending how conspiratorially-minded you are, you can make up similar scenarios involving collusion of big Pharm, China, Fauci, the Democrats, the Presidential election, TDS, threats to the Deep State, etc.
“adding APPS you don’t have time to understand” — HIGHLY stressful. You cannot go into a store these days without them nearly DEMANDING you use their app. I cannot get into my gym without an app. Safeway has so many types of discount programs it makes my head spin and I am never sure I’m getting the best price. You have the regular price, the sale price for regular folks, the “member” price (where you used to just enter a phone number on the POS terminal), the “Just 4 U” price on the app, the weekly advert flier (available in the app), “Extras” in the app which is just like another printed advert flier. It is MASSIVELY confusing and very stressful.
Before I retired, I didn’t worry too much about any of that crap except entering my “member number” to get special deals at the gas station. In retirement and high inflation, I’m paying strict attention to spending. What used to be very simple was supposed to get simpler yet has become very complicated with “apps.” Grrrrr.
“And that is because we have too much easy money looking for a place to land.”
Why did we have so many years of easy money (effectively 0% rates)? Because of the subprime real estate meltdown in 2008.
Why did we have the real estate meltdown? Because of the Clinton / Dem Congress “Community Reinvestment Act” made sure EVERYBODY could own a home. You barely needed a pulse (and no employment verification) to get a mortgage.
Then stupid government never learns and COVID hit, so they shut down the economy throwing everybody out of work. Then they printed $5 trillion out of thin air which ignited inflation requiring rates (at zero due to the 2008 meltdown) to go up setting off today’s mess.
EVERYTHING is because of stupid, corrupt government.
That’s an excellent post, Sequoyah. Very well put.
“Just one day I would like not to hear from the gooberment about anything.” — Wouldn’t we all? Or from the evil wokesters, child mutilators, homos, trannies — all of it.
We were fortunately to be able to buy a second house in the Idaho panhandle, only 40 miles from where my Mom was born and one mile from where my grandparents retired in 1966. Unfortunately, all the people fleeing the crap in CA, OR, and WA are coming to our little, hidden Shangri-La and it has changed a lot in the past 5 years. It is growing furiously and everybody fears the transplants are bringing their evil ways with them.
OK, you called out what you think DID NOT cause the collapse. Please explain what did or post an article that you think caused it.
It was a phase. A national and global mania.
I was working wells at Rifle, Colorado and drove the cutoff from there to Colbran across Parachute before the invasion. One day bare badlands and the next trip dozers leveling the area for a town. Just as soon as it started it ended.
Saw the same thing with Synfuels at the bureau of mines lab south of Pittsburgh. One day a flurry of activity and frame work for the chemistry set writ large. Beams, cranes and vessels everywhere. Then I visited the place in like ‘92 or ‘93 to get coal bed methane data and the whole affair of Synfuels was a bare foundation.
We too have plenty of coal for Snyfuels but it also produces a lot of nasty stuff and is very hard to do.
It was really a panic borne of irrational fears and encouraged by gooberment grants and credits. Show a politician a problem and eventually he will throw enough money at it to choke a horse guided by K street buddies and know nothings in it for a buck. The pattern never changes.
I and a team went looking for a trillion cubic feet of coal bed methane. We found it, we could get the minerals position. I was selected to give the presentation to the execs. I got up, stated our mission and said we found it, it can be done but the recommendation is short, don’t do it. I said we had a very interesting hunt and learned a lot of things but unless you want to dig into this it is academic. Without tax credits this is a losing proposition. They wanted to hear the whole story so I made the full presentation. When finished the boss looked at me, smiled and said, I agree but I also agree it is a fun story.
Only a couple of places made money on CBM. They were really not CBM but interbedded coal in sandstone reservoirs that got the tax treatment anyway. Unique locations, made a ton of money.
What about arsenic, mercury and such from flue gas?
Of course now they are not only after CO2 they are after Nitrogen. I wonder how much nitrogen, in tons, falls to earth per inch of rain per square mile? Years ago an acquaintance working for one of the cooker companies did the calcs for man made CO2 vs natural. At that time it was a volume equivalent to the end of the tail of an elephant with the rest, naturally released, being the rest of the elephant.
Do you also remember the subsea collection domes Arco built for Santa Barbara to capture natural seeps as compensation for developing area fields. What a fiasco. Wonder what ever happened to those?
There ain’t no place worth living you can hide in.
During and after Covid lots of money flowed into the companies that are SVB’s primary customers, and much of that money ended up being deposited into SVB.
These deposits were way more than SVB could turn around and lend out, so SVB bought long-term treasuries and mortgage backed securities as a place to park the money and get a little return.
When interest rates went up the market value of those low-yielding securities on SVB’s books declined. This normally wouldn’t be a problem because if the bank held the bonds to maturity there would be no loss.
When SVB’s customers started to withdraw more money than SVB was expecting SVB needed to sell some of its securities to provide the cash - again, this is just how banking works.
The problem was, SVB had screwed up and didn’t have enough of its reserves in short term paper, so they had to sell the long-term bonds and recognize the book loss.
This made them fall below the minimum required reserves so they had to raise capital.
SVB management stupidly made this public which spooked people and resulted in the run on the bank.
In short, as a result of stupid management SVB ended up with a maturity mis-match between assets and liabilities and got squeezed when rates went up.
I imagine that “Lambos, McLarens, and Ferraris” don’t come out entirely unscathed after encounters with “massive, car-destroying potholes”. Must be good to be in wheel, frame, and suspension repair business for exotics.
Regarding this bailout:
It has been reported Oprah had mucho dinero in SVB.
How much did woke Obama have deposited there?
They mostly come out when the fine weather arrives. Then the country drives are wonderful. But, yes, those low-slung cars must be especially nervous about the huge rips, gouges, and potholes. The McClaren dealership in Palo Alto is right on El Camino, the worse road in the area. $2 million dollar cars on $2 pavement!
They need to install 6” lift kits and even that might not be enough.
Lol! I hear ya.
Keeping up ain’t for the weak of heart.
People as they walk by me tell me there is an AAP for that just to p*ss me off 😂😉
Now just a cotton pickin’ minit here. Let’s be fair. They knew the businesses would fail. They weren’t stupid. It was just a way to launder money through front companies to slip to the right politicians.
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