It's no surprise that a bank focusing on woke politics failed, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell told Newsmax on Monday.
In his interview with "Prime News," Grenell said that "whenever you have an administration that is going to completely concentrate on diversity, equity, [and] inclusion-type of programs, you're going to have a huge problem."
Grenell continued: "Look, people go to a bank because they want to, you know, have loans; they want banking services. And yet this small bank had 1,500 climate-related loans. For a small bank, that's a lot. That's probably too much, and I think that's what was happening is that they were having too many people that we're looking at the peripheral issues and not at the substance."
The New York Times reported that Silicon Valley Bank issued billions of dollars to more than "1,550 technology firms" working in areas such as solar, "hydrogen and battery storage projects."
According to the CEO of Arcadia, the largest community solar manager in the country, Kiran Bhatraju, "Silicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank. When you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, there's going to be a lot of collateral damage."
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