SVB equals bailout for ‘advantaged class’, Xi’s opportunity in Silicon Valley and other comments

Republican: SVB = bailout for the “advantaged class”

When Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen “announced that all technology companies that deposit funds” at Silicon Valley Bank, Vivek Ramaswamy told Newsweek, “would be healed, the federal government sent a clear message to the American people: there is alternative rules if you are part of the favored class. After all, “the normal rules of the road are clear: the first $250,000 is FDIC insured. After that, the customer is responsible for the loss. But Silicon Valley wanted a different set of rules for itself” – and got them, via “bogus” arguments amounting to “gross self-interest disguised as altruistic concern for the country”, since “capital investors- risk could easily infuse new equity to make up for any balance sheet loss. The fact is, “It’s a bailout, pure and simple.”

Surveillance of China: Xi’s opportunity in Silicon Valley

“China loves sellouts,” Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic note to The Hill – witnessing her actions during the 2008 financial crisis, when she bought US stocks at a steep discount. After the SVB bailout, “there is nothing stopping China from getting closer” to “critical and foundational emerging technologies” because “the dominant banking partner in the US tech ecosystem disappeared overnight.” Thus, “the United States should be wary of China rushing into the void.” Such “efforts, if successful, will directly feed into China’s military modernization agenda and technological surveillance state.” “Let’s not let China define the period ahead. Rather, consider this moment as a warning that underscores the strategic importance of capital flows in private markets. And let’s treat them as a competitive field.

Pandemic Review: Ignore the Wuhan Market Hype

A ‘breathless piece’ in The Atlantic claims there is ‘new evidence’ that COVID started in a Wuhan seafood market, but it ‘fails to clear the first hurdle’, mocks Matt Ridley of The Spectator. It indicates that raccoon dogs sold illegally there “could have carried and possibly shed the virus” in late 2019. .” We’ve known for years that the market was selling raccoon dogs, and Chinese scientists “found the virus in sixty-four places in the market” – “in all cases” the “human form” of the virus. It’s just the latest in a “bizarre trend in which a small group of Western virologists with easy access to the media” are “desperate not to admit that the pandemic could have started in a virology lab.”

From right: Chicago’s runoff issues

The Chicago teachers’ union gave “feverish support to progressive candidate Brandon Johnson” in the city’s mayoral runoff on April 4, Wall Street Journal editors warn. “The CTU and its political action committee gave Mr. Johnson more than $2 million and even dipped into the pot of individual teachers’ dues to give him an extra boost” since: “If the union can bring Mr. Johnson to City Hall, he’ll be sitting on both sides of the negotiating table,” and his dwindling public approval ratings won’t matter. Meanwhile, “some 83% of Chicago students graduate from high school, but less than a third master reading or math on the academic aptitude test.”

Gadfly: Bank failures show madness of elites

“The new capitalists were meant to be different,” muses Fraser Myers of Spiked, but “the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) should shatter those illusions, once and for all.” SVB ‘had more money than they had room to put’. For what? “Easy money has created a tech scene based less on genuine innovation or consumer benefits and more on hype, bluff and bulls,” so “many generously funded Silicon Valley companies are just stupid”. “Even some of Big Tech’s most popular apps, like Uber and Deliveroo, are built on financial sand.” “In the fall of the SVB, we see the delusions of the elites returning home to perch. The Silicon Valley dream, sold on hype and backed by easy money, has turned into a nightmare.

– Compiled by the Editorial Board of The Post