In reading Marie Tomlinson’s column last week on the recent banking troubles the main emphasis of the article was, as it always is, “it’s the GOP’s or conservatives fault”. Interestingly she fails to mention the bank that actually started our most recent bank troubles, Silicon Valley Bank. I’m quite sure this was not just a simple omission. SVB is based in the heart of California’s leftist base where 97% of all political contributions go to Democrats. Let’s review what we know about this bank and the 2018 bank changes she references:

¯ The 2018 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act was passed bipartisan with 16 Democratic Senators and 33 House Democrats voting for it.

¯ SVB was a completely mismanaged bank. The liquidity issue came about when they failed to hedge their US treasury purchases when interest rates increased sharply. They had many months to correct this situation but for some reason failed to execute any type of plan to mitigate the potential damage. While this was happening they had no Chief Risk Officer from 4/22-12/22.

¯ The San Francisco Federal Reserve had authority in this case. One wonders what they were doing while SVB’s liquidity was spiraling downward. These are same regulators she and Senator Warren seem to be endorsing to have more authority. They failed miserably in this case.

¯ Speaking of the Federal Reserve, they along with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, unilaterally decided to make all of SVB’s depositors whole, even the unsecured amounts over the FDIC threshold of $250,000. One wonders why such unprecedented action was necessary. Remember the bank had many of those left leaning Silicon Valley venture capitalists with deposits over the threshold and even included several Chinese investors.

¯ On their Board of Directors only one, yes one, had actual investment banking experience. The rest included several large Democratic supporters. One of which flew to Japan on Thanksgiving weekend 2016 to pray to the Shinto shrine in Kyoto because Donald Trump was elected President as she donated $50,000 to the Clinton campaign.

¯ They touted their ESG and DEI initiatives along with bringing in experts on use of “personal pronouns” in the workplace. These initiatives are certainly indicative of a left leaning company.

¯ There is an attempt to equate a bank bailout to Student Debt Relief. One of the big differences here is banks actually pay into the FDIC insurance fund. Remember many of the people that would be eligible for this SDR have recently received $3,200 individually + significant amounts for every child they had in COVID relief. And besides, simply put, if you took out a loan you must pay back the loan. Additionally this SDR would add to the National Debt, estimates are from $400 – $800 billion.

It’s pretty clear this banking crisis was started by a left/liberal Democratic run bank that was bailed out by a Democratic Treasury Secretary. I hope that I’ve provided some balance to this recent column. Thank you for your time.

Ray Coniglio is a Fredonia resident.