There comes a point in every young man’s life — sometimes as early age 12 — when he realizes that he has become physically stronger than his mother and that, perhaps, he doesn’t need to obey her any more.
Such boys are always wrong, of course. The ability to overpower someone doesn’t make them wiser. Boys should always listen to their moms.
But alas Western Civilization is experiencing this phenomenon on a global level right now, as so-called progressives have grown too strong for their own good. We see it everywhere, but notably with the collapse of Silicon Valley and Signature banks — the second and third-largest such failures in U.S. history — have rattled financial markets and given everyone horrifying 2008 déjà vu.
There have been two responses to this.
One has been from conservatives, quick to point out that these banks failed because of misguided emphasis on ESG, equity, and climate whatever instead of just conducting business responsibly.
The other has been from liberals, who blame the collapses on a lack of government oversight. The Biden administration and its left-wing allies want more laws on the books because of — you guessed it — Donald Trump. Specifically, Biden and others are pointing to Trump’s de-regulating the disastrous Dodd-Frank in 2018.
Which is all, of course, ridiculous. Because the same lefties demanding this regulation are the ones who ran SVB and Signature into the ground.
The Bay Area is a dysfunctional, political monolith. Progressives have unlimited wealth and unlimited power, and it’s a disaster. We could go through the list of statistics on San Francisco’s many, many hypocrisies and failures, but we don’t need to. It’s so bad there that nowadays even The New York Times does it!
So one imagines that no matter how many times the banks’ managers used the word diversity! that none of them voted for Trump. If these banks needed left-wing oversight, they already had it in-house; any more from Washington wouldn’t have made a difference.
San Fran liberals whining that they need more liberalism is like a 12-year-old boy complaining that his room is too messy and he’s eaten too much candy.
This crash is not a failure of regulation, it’s a failure of supervision. The organization that should have been overseeing SVB and Signature is the ultra-left-wing Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, but follow-through is the farthest thing from its collective mind.
Look no farther than the bank’s main page, which brags about:
But notice how they don’t have anything there on “Executing appropriate fiduciary responsibility”? Responsibility isn’t fun. Protesting is fun, cleaning up after one isn’t.
This is all almost as ridiculous as when Mark Zuckerberg wrote an opinion piece demanding more regulation of social media. The whole region is too strong for its own good. Silicon Valley is a house full of spoiled children whose parents are away for the weekend.
Those people who’ve spent their lives preaching the need to “fight the power!” are now in power, and they don’t know what to do with themselves.
It all makes me miss when bankers were just greedy; greed I understand. Greed — when it’s aimed in a mutually beneficial direction — for lack of a better word is good. But when enlightened self-interest is replaced with a cult-like, self-destructive dogma, then everyone suffers.
We need less regulation, not more. If so-called progressives destroy the American financial system, they will not create utopia. They will create a world run by the Chinese financial system — one which is completely unburdened by worries about equity, the environment, and age stereotypes in job advertisements.
Should Congress rush through any regulation it would undoubtedly make matters worse, putting into law the kind of woketarianism that ruined SBV and Signature.
Silicon Valley banks don’t need regulation. But some of the people in charge of them need a long-overdue spanking.
Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the U.S. Congress, White House and defense industry. He is an award-winning writer, having won best blogger in the state from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists (2018) and best columnist from Best of the West (2016). He earned his MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai. Read Jared Whitley's reports — More Here.
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