Did Woke Banks Know Biden Would Come to the Rescue? - UPDATED!

Something stinks in Silicon Valley.

We at PoliticalArena try to avoid speculation. After all, this is not Info-Wars and we try to keep our reporting pretty “Joe Friday” with speculative reporting only when it seems appropriate. We also make it clear when we do speculate. We engage in speculation in this piece to be sure, but at this point the circumstances are starting to make “speculation” look more like a comedy skit from “Mister Obvious.”

As details come out from the Silicon Calley Bank failure and other failed banks like Signature, they have several things in common. They had board members and executives who were Democratic Party donors, had little experience in running a successful bank, virtue signaled their wokeness and backed it up with ESG investing and donations to far left political groups. They knew all the right people and were invited to all the right events. SVB even had its own political action committee (PAC).

It gets better. SVB hired powerful Washington DC lobbying firms. OpenSecrets, the most well-known election money watchdog reports:

Every federal lobbyist that has registered to work on behalf of Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed Friday in the largest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, swung through the so-called “revolving door” between the federal government and private sector, a new OpenSecrets analysis of federal lobbying disclosures found.

Silicon Valley Bank first hired federal lobbying firms DLA Piper and Franklin Square Group in 2009. While the bank worked with federal lobbyists at DLA Piper through 2010 and McGuireWoods from 2010 to 2011, Franklin Square Group has been the sole lobbying firm registered on behalf of Silicon Valley Bank since 2011.

All seven of Silicon Valley Bank’s registered lobbyists in 2022 previously held jobs in the government responsible for overseeing and regulating financial institutions, according to OpenSecrets data, and all are or were partners at Franklin Square Group. 

Franklin Square Group has reported receiving more than $1.9 million from Silicon Valley Bank since 2009. Silicon Valley Bank — and other big banks — ramped up lobbying efforts to weaken banking regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

Click for Daily Mail Article

Some executives at SVB were also executives at other failed banks. NY Post:

Top Silicon Valley Bank execs worked at notoriously troubled Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank

Two executives at doomed Silicon Valley Bank and one of its corporate siblings faced social media scrutiny Monday over their ties to notoriously troubled financial giants — the now-shuttered Lehman Brothers and the scandal-scarred Deutsche Bank.

The employment records of SVB’s Kim Olson and SVB Securities executive Joseph Gentile raised eyebrows on social media after the tech lender’s rapid meltdown prompted fears of a systemic economic crisis. The feds were forced to bail out SVB on Sunday to restore public confidence in the banking sector.

Gentile serves as chief administrative officer of SVB Securities, a standalone investment bank wholly owned by parent company SVB Financial. But prior to taking that role in 2007, Gentile had a short stint as the chief financial officer for the fixed income division of Lehman Brothers’ Global Investment Bank.

Olson was hired as SVB’s chief risk officer in January. Before joining the tech lender, she had a stint in a senior risk management role at Deutsche Bank during the Great Recession.

In 2017, Deutsche Bank was forced to pay a massive $7.2 billion penalty after admitting it lied to investors about its mortgage-backed securities — the collapse of which was a major factor in the housing market’s implosion during the financial crisis.

Before her stint at Deutsche Bank, Olson was a managing director at Fitch Ratings, the agency that makes determinations on the creditworthiness of investments and institutions.

The leadership at SVB also has another feather in its cap, plausible deniability.

SVB had no asset risk manager for nine months. How does a bank worth $22 billion not have someone in such a position? And look who they got for a risk manager. Someone with Kim Olson’s history would not seem a suitable hire especially after what the New York Post revealed above.

Under these circumstances the board and other executives can claim ignorance when they are sued for fraud by the stockholders. And to put the icing on the cake, President Biden is reimbursing all of SVB’s depositors to an unlimited amount of money instead of the normal FDIC $250,000. We wonder if the Bank of East Palestine, Ohio would get such a favor? Silicon Valley has plenty of big Democrat donors.

This behavior by government of capitalism when you make money on risk, and socializing the losses for the chosen ones simply encourages more grifting, more fraud and more reckless behavior.

What a neat pretty little picture the circumstances have painted here. The taxpayers and smaller banks get hosed as the FDIC will have to increase fees on all of the responsible banks to help cover the losses. Look who won and look who lost.

Much Like Sam Bankman-Fried, SVB had the contacts, the influence and the lobbyists to fend off regulators and make a deal. They acted as if they had nothing to lose…maybe they didn’t. There have certainly been more sophisticated fraud schemes and grifting operations.

Maria Bartiromo says this bank’s priorities scare her. Harris Faulkner calls it theft. And of course, there is yet another Biden/China connection.

Us too Maria. Something stinks.

UPDATE - Blackrock warned SVB they were in trouble in January of 2022. When Blackrock asked if SVB wanted follow-up work to help them out SVB said no. More plausible deniability?

Financial Times:

UPDATE - Tim Pool: Corrupt Government IGNORED East Palestine, Runs Full Speed to Save Silicon Valley Elites:

In truth they tried to ignore East Palestine until Trump brought the heat.