Amid Banking Collapse, White House Says “We See A Strong Economy” – Summit News

“In response to this, the Biden administration rolled out a major bailout, conveniently bailing out the politically connected friends of the Biden White House in a way that will have lasting repercussions for the economy, and will almost certainly incentivize future bad conduct by other banks,” Cruz asserted.

The Senator continued, “They were gambling that the Fed would not raise rates even though they’d been screaming from the mountaintops that they were going to raise rates.”

“A bank that is being prudent can hedge its investments against interest rates rising by investing also in counterbalancing investments that will go up when interest rates go up. They didn’t do that! They were focused on virtue signaling. They were focused on showing just how woke they are,” Cruz added referring to the revelation that SVB was obsessed with pushing ‘diversity and inclusion’ policies:

“These bank officers were bad actors,” Cruz continued, adding “Let me let me tell you two data points that have been vastly underreported. Number one, hours before the bank was shut down Silicon Valley Bank gave very substantial bonuses to all of its employees. They just began writing checks to everyone hours before they were shut down. Data point number two: in the two weeks prior to their being shut down, the CEO and the CFO sold large amounts of stock. The CEO ended up making over a $2 million profit from selling stock less than two weeks before the bank was shut down. Both of those indicate corrupt intent.”

Cruz also noted that he “had a conference call in the last 48 hours with all 100 Senators were invited to participate and Treasury and the FDIC was on there and I asked I said, ‘Look, is it true that they gave bonuses to their employees, number one? If so, I think it is outrageous. And number two, has there been any investigation into clawing back those bonuses?’”

“As far as I’m concerned, this is like Bonnie and Clyde,” Cruz charged, urging that “They’re robbing the bank as they know their customers’ deposits are about to get blown up. And much of the media coverage has ignored the exceptionally bad conduct by the bank’s officers.”

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