by JAMES P. PINKERTON at breitbart.com
Go Woke, Go Bust
Oh so woke, oh so green, oh so diverse Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) just went bust.
One can go to its website—still up for who knows how much longer—and see that it claims assets of $212 billion. But as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall; and SVB makes for the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Remarkably, 93 percent of the bank’s $161 billion in deposits are uninsured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which only covers accounts up to $250,000. And Roku, to name just one whale, had $487 million in Silicon Valley Bank. So, just for starters, a lot of CFOs—the folks in charge of handling a company’s money—are gonna have some ‘splaining to do.
Speaking of ‘splaining, SVB officials will need to answer a lot of questions, including, What role did wokeness play in SVB’s failure?
Another term for wokeness, of course, is 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 aren’t good investments. For instance, one study by professors at the London School of Economics and Columbia University finds that:
ESG funds appear to underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset manager and year, and to charge higher fees. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders.
Shorter version: ESG makes less, costs more, and is a fraud.
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.
So, it’s funny, in a not-funny way, that as recently as March 7, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was urging faster please on ESG. “A delayed and disorderly transition to a net-zero economy can lead to shocks to the financial system,” she said.
Well, we haven’t gotten to net-zero yet—and we never will, especially with China still building coal plants—but we’ve already had a shock to the financial system.