This looks like it’s just a very clumsy update to the big lie from last time round. In 2008, they tried to pin the collapse of the mortgage market on “poor and brown people not paying back their loans” rather than lax regulation, predatory lending and outright fraud pumping up the market before it collapsed.
This time round, the link is much more tenuous, because the bank involved was mainly lending to corporations, so the blame shifting looks much more outlandish.
Heaven forbid if that black person is ALSO a veteran!
This is also a good point — even in your BEST case scenario, the executive board says to someone on the leadership board, “Hey, we need to hire one of those fancy corporate DEI consultants. Take it outta the PR budget.” And that’s about the end of their concerns.
There’s always a “, but…”
Damn, and here I thought it was gonna be Holman Jenkins, who usually has the batshittiest crazy things to say on the OpEd page…
Ah, the infamous WSJ opinion page.
Where, in order to compensate for the fact-based reporting the rest of the paper must deliver so conservative money managers can keep their jobs, facts and logic must go to die.
Glenn Beck was/is a master of that. He’d springboard off a JAQ, and then weave a whole narrative around his imagined incorrect answer. I think some of Trump’ “success” owes a debt to him. I couldn’t remember his name but the keywords “blackboard”, “conspiracy” and “commentator” allowed Google to vomit forth his name.
Very much this. As a former banker, just this snippet of this verbal diarrhea makes my blood boil. I would need to read SVB’s bylaws, but in a typical bank the board does not run the day to day activities. Full stop. They may approve an investment strategy based on management’s recommendations, but even that is rare. The board’s job is to ensure that management is operating the bank legally, ethically, and in the best interest of the shareholders, customers, and employees. They approve annual budgets, write-offs above a certain amount, strategic plans, and ensure the annual audit is clean. They may or may not have specific expertise, but that is usually spread across many relevant fields (banking, legal, regulations, investing, operations, etc.)
This was a failure of the oh-so-white and shockingly male executive team. Mediocre white men brought down this bank, not “woke” culture.
Of course, I don’t expect any better from the Wall Street Journal.
Years ago, back when the Bancroft family owned the paper, I met a WSJ reporter at a party and eventually asked about the op-ed pages. His resigned and embarrassed response came in the form of an analogy to the otherwise stable and functional multi-generational household that has to keep the crazy and disruptive uncle in the attic because he knew how to flatter the rich grandfather.
Also, apparently the only reason the bank has that one Black person is because they’re obsessed with diversity and can’t think of anything else… I can’t even.
Right now… people on reddit (slashfinance) are badgering some wsj reporters in an ama who can’t comment on the opinion page because it’s a separate department.
I wish “blame minorities” wasn’t such a great strategy for making sure no one can talk about anything else during times when it might be critically important to do so.
Currently it seems like all a publication has to do to shut down discourse and control the narrative around any event is to publish and inflammatory op-ed that blames some marginalized group or scapegoats some people in such a blatantly dishonest and divisive way that it causes pain, generates real disgust and anger, and causes people actual harm which of course starts to dominate discourse… and then it is too “controversial” to talk about anymore.
It was actually Lack of diversity, or to be more accurate, diversification. No loans, and all their fiscal eggs in one basket. Or, too few baskets.
And sad to say, that was their raison d’etre. They were focussing on startups, and, generally speaking, startups died, given Coronavirus and general recession.
Was Mike Collins a contributor to this op-ed?
Yep, and it’s only getting worse. But the WaPost today has an article by Julian Mark titled GOP blames Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse on ‘ESG’ policies. Here’s what to know, with the subtitle The investing world is being drawn into the culture wars and hit by a conservative backlash to “wokeism.” It refutes some of that stupid shit that Andy Kessler wrote in the WSJ. Let me repeat: That stupid shit that Andy wrote emanating from the Rupert bung hole.
I have the WSJ app on my device and it always seems to be feeding me more opinion than actual reporting. It’s grossly obvious.
Earlier in Glenn Beck’s career, he had a go as a sort of shock-jock DJ in Connecticut, at a radio station in my hometown. Even as like a middle schooler, I knew he was a blowhard — not edgy or funny like Howard Stern (in my mind), but just a prick. Even my RINO parents hated him.
merkin von bankrupt’s financial deregulation shenanigans are the fucking cause, you racist AF murdick-run pseudo-journalist!
… to the oligarchs, personally serving in the military is hopelessly lower-middle-class 
To me that quote reads: I’m not saying I’m a racist bigot, but I’m a racist bigot. Kudos for the one drop reference @Brainspore!
