Proverbs and the Silicon Valley Bank Bust

Anyone reading the Old Testament could have seen this coming.

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The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank is infuriating for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that an awful lot of normal, non-rich people’s red flags were already spinning like a pinwheel at the word “Bank” right next to the words “Silicon Valley.” Any attempt to withhold judgment on that bank’s failure fizzled on Sunday, when an irritatingly long tweet thread sure seemed to confirm that this was a self-inflicted wound brought on a venture capitalist group chat. 

Barry Ritholtz observed that just like there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no capitalists in a bank crisis. There was a lot of regular folk schadenfreude around how many wealthy dorks who’d publicly wagged their finger at a social safety net for the lazy, entitled poors were suddenly demanding a bailout. Not so easy to preach about personal responsibility and the free market when it’s your own personal savings being wiped out, is it? But of course, our government — usually so cautious about helping the financially struggling because inflation and blah, blah, blah — flew into action this time, and had a plan to protect depositors in place before the weekend was up. It’s worth examining just what message we can take from that though, if you’ve spent much time in the Book of Proverbs, you’ve already got the basics.