Brooks Agnew – The first in a long list of box-checking financial institutions, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) just went bust in the amount of $212 billion. This is not just any bank. This is where the hottest tech startups in the world borrowed money to get started, and where most of them called home for all their online banking.
Remarkably, 93 percent of the bank’s $161 billion in deposits are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which only covers accounts up to $250,000. And Roku, to name just one many whales, had $487 million in Silicon Valley Bank.
The question on your mind right now, is why did all these hockey stick companies put all their eggs in one basket? There are fiduciary rules for running a corporation, and one of those is to protect the cash assets of the shareholders; us. I don’t bank with one bank, and I am a very small business. Large, publicly traded corporations should spread out the risk and take advantage of insurance wherever they can.
The shareholder lawsuits that are coming will wipe out 80% of these companies, as the they try to recoup their losses from the company’s stupidity. Yes, I said it. Checking the boxes is more important than protecting the company’s assets.
Now, when I use the term box-checkers, what do you think I am referring to? Imagine if you had a bank that was bloated with cash, with Mopsie as the CEO. You know; a box-checker. Virtual Joe’s press secretary is queer, black female. Those are her qualifications, as she is also functionally illiterate, but I don’t know if that is actually one of the boxes.
The boxes are the qualifiers for these high positions in many corporations. They are the only qualifications in many cases. ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and governance. ESG is a pertinent question, as there’s a considerable body of economic literature showing that woke investments are extraordinarily bad investments. For instance, one study by professors at the London School of Economics and Columbia University finds that:
ESG funds almost universally underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset class and year. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders; especially if those shareholders are white Trump voters. Don’t believe me? Go see how many relief finds are flowing into East Palestine, Ohio. Why not? Because they are all Trump voters.
Shorter version: ESG does not earn money, costs more, and is a fraud. Do you know how many people watch Virtual Joe’s press secretary? No one. Why? Because she cannot speak in complete sentences. She does not actually ever say anything. Now you get it. No one goes to the CEO’s office, because the CEO is too busy worried about where they are going to have their next anonymous sexual experience. Oh, does that hurt your feelings? Well, it’s true. And when the brushfires break out, because they neglected to keep the weeds trimmed won, they are quick to accuse the fire department of racism or homophobia.
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. By the way, Virtual Joe will soon plunge America 110% in debt compared to our gross domestic product. By the way, the event in 1929 occurred when we were just 16% in debt compared to our gross domestic product.
You might recall that on March 7, just a few hours before the bank’s collapse, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was urging faster please on ESG. More queer CEO’s and CFO’s. Do it now. If you do not follow my orders, you will not be able to borrow from the US treasury. We need net zero carbon emissions. That’s the environmental aspect of ESG.
This is one of the most effective weapons the CCP uses to destroy America and its western allies. Shut down oil. Shut down farms. Shut down cars. Of course, while we are being shut down, China is still building coal plants as fast as they can.
Then there’s the question of bailing out SVB beyond FDIC requirements. As The Washington Post reported on Saturday, a “ferocious political debate” has erupted in D.C. over some political fix that could, of course, cost taxpayers many, many billions. The main issue is, of course, that 95% of the people who had their money in SVG are not-Trump voters. Virtual Joe has been ordered to keep these people from being butt hurt.
The question came to me about how the bank got in this position. They were low-interest loan heaven for tech startups. These companies went from a concept on a tablet to hundreds of millions in revenue with the flip of an APP. I was told by one of the loan officers in this industry when I complained about the discrimination against American manufacturers having access to capital that the reason is, “These companies build value too quickly, it’s irresistible to fund them.”
I had to agree with him. A company who’s CEO is 19 years old and whose office is in a laptop at Starbucks makes a million a month in profits the instant their facebook ads launch? Who can argue with that?
So again, I wondered how could ESG actually topple that business model? Then, I opened my eyes. People are looking in the wrong place. Remember what happened in 2008, when the Democrat policy of fertilizing subprime mortgages crashed the entire world? Remember The Big Short?
A few months back, Elon Musk took over Twitter. He laid off 10 thousand employees at an average salary of $100k a year. Do the math. That is $1 billion a year in income, gone. Where did 95% of those people bank, have their home and car loans, and their unsecured loans? Yep. SVG. When these people stopped making their payments, probably within 2 months of being fired, the bank started seeing delinquencies on all these debts. At first it was $1 million a month, then it was 10 and then it was 70. The bank found itself with a bag of dog shit for loans.
When the bank couldn’t make it’s payments, the news travelled so fast that $42 billion in deposits were wired away to other banks in one single day. No money coming in, no deposits to back dog shit loans, the regulators started making calls, and the next thing you know, the bank is forced to close.
That was 2 days ago. Tomorrow, the line forms again at the ATM’s, and there is no money.
Fiduciary duty is a heavy legal concept, containing significant civil and even criminal penalties if it is violated. So, now expect a scramble, as all the Emperors of ESG—including Al Gore, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and maybe even Bono—rush to tell us that this is fine. They will tell us that it is all Elon’s fault.
Oh no. We had plenty of warning that the ESG boxes were not enough. On January 10, 2022: “Silicon Valley Bank Commits to $5 Billion in Sustainable Finance and Carbon Neutral Operations to Support a Healthier Planet.” Sounds green! But was $5 billion the best use of funds? Or, was it money laundering depositor’s funds into a politician’s non-profit? All we know for sure is that CEO Greg Becker chose not to address the fiduciary matter when he said, “Our ability to make a meaningful difference for people and the planet, and to address the systemic risk that climate change presents, is magnified by the outsized impact our innovative clients make.”
Clients huh? You mean people who have no collateral to get a loan, so the wokies decide to give them a grant. That kind of client?
All that money might have seemed great for the slave laborers in Africa mining green minerals and maybe the planet Chinese factories making giant windmills or solar panels or lithium batteries, but it doesn’t seem to have been great for SVB investors and depositors.
Oh, but there is more woke-speech that might make the difference:
“Our corporate philosophy of transparency and accountability guides our reporting on environmental, social and governance (there is the ESG) performance with the goal of building trust and evolving our policies and disclosures.”
Yes, that’s what SVB is all about, right? Building trust. We’re spending your money in the right way. Please give us more. Yeah. You see socialists absolutely love socialism. A few days ago, right before the bank was shut down by regulators, the box-checking CEO Becker sold $3.6 million in stock. Was he being transparent with his bank? Was he doing his fiduciary duty, cashing out right after the warning call from the regulators?
And it gets better. Here’s more green blather from SVB:
“We support entrepreneurs and high-growth businesses at the forefront of innovation, helping to advance solutions that create a more just and sustainable world. Our longstanding commitment to innovation, combined with our deep experience supporting evolving technologies, enables us to contribute to a healthier planet via our own efforts and those of our clients.”
Contribute what? Oh yeah. The depositor’s money. And what does just mean? What does sustainable mean? What does healthier planet mean? For whom? Not for you, Earth explorers. For them. And le’ts not even get started on diversity or equity or inclusion. Believe me, this does not include you. It only includes them.
Let’s just take the one deleted tweet from Christina Qi, who identifies herself as a former hedge fund CEO:
“The SVB collapse has been devastating in more ways than one: They supported women, minorities, & the LGBTQ community more than any other big bank. This includes not just diverse events, but actual funding. SVB helped us move one step forward; without them, we move two steps back.”
One sharp tweeter responded, “Maybe other banks will take a look at this failure and realize they need to do actual banking instead of virtue signaling.”
Remember, Earth Explorers, 95% of these people are not-Trump voters. The trouble is that patriots are in charge of the purse strings. A bank bailout does not look likely. Roku had $250 million in that bank. Only $250k is insured. The rest of the money is in the same place all that FTX money is sitting, earning interest for the Global Syndicate.
SF Source Brooks Agnew Mar 2023