In addition to being a lesson in what can happen when investing in a precarious sector, Seth Meyers views the dramatic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank as a tale of two presidents.
Whereas Meyers thinks Joe Biden did “pretty much exactly what you’d want a president to do in this situation: take immediate action [and] reassure Americans everything will be OK,” former POTUS Donald Trump did… the exact opposite.
“Trump is clearly aware of the fact that sometimes, sometimes, he has the tendency to overreact,” Meyers explained on Monday. “So, instead of freaking everyone out, Trump projected calm and confidence when he wrote this very reassuring message in all caps” and posted it to his Truth Social page:
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Meyers conceded that there were a number of factors that contributed to SVB’s collapse, including “the infuriating hypocrisy of all these libertarian venture capitalist tech bros who routinely rail against government overreach and preach about decentralizing finance” essentially “tanking their own bank.” Ultimately, however, Meyers points to Trump’s decision to blow up the Dodd-Frank Act—a 2010 federal law that attempted to make sure no company or organization was ever “too big to fail”—that made all this SVB drama possible.
“I mean, fucking of course it was Trump,” he said. “Trying to figure out what went wrong in this country is turning into a super-boring game of Clue where the weapon is always a pen and the killer’s always Colonel Ketchup… Basically, Trump repealed liquidity requirements that would have ensured mid-sized banks like SVB had enough cash on hand to weather a storm like this.”
Even worse, the host explained, Trump regularly, loudly, and proudly promoted the fact that he would be giving the Dodd-Frank Act “a very major haircut.”
“How could you POSSIBLY think rolling back regulations on banks 10 years after a financial meltdown could ever be a good idea? Meyers demanded to know. “It’s like getting up at a podium and saying, ‘We’re finally going to ease the regulatory burden on our nation’s cannibals by allowing them to take off those muzzles. We love our cannibals. They’re job creators and I’m very confident that they’ll stick to their promise of only eating salads and—oh fuck, he’s got my arm.”
