![]() His Founder's Fund helped kickstart the SVB bank run, by pulling millions out rather suddenly, right before things went straight to hell. Thiel's fingers are, unsurprisingly, all over this situation. Sure enough, it was quickly revealed that SVB's CEO, Greg Becker, dumped stock two weeks ago, netting a cool $3.6 million. Even as depositors were panicking after a run on the bank, Axios reported, annual bonuses were being paid out to bank executives. The story of the rapid disintegration of this bank, which has been a mainstay of the computer industry for years now, has been rife with 2008-level details of rich people's egos and entitlement. Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only. The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which appears to be due to the same deregulation mania and rich guy hubris that led to the 2008 collapse, may be the final nail in the coffin of the hero worship of tech billionaires. But in the past year, the fable of the benevolent tech billionaire has really taken a beating. (The actual workers, as is true in most industries, lean more left than management.) One red flag: All these tech CEOs are buddies with major investor Peter Thiel, a sniveling Trump supporter who once questioned whether women's suffrage was a good idea. There were always hints that the myth of "progressive" Silicon Valley was way overblown, at least when it comes to the venture capitalist class. They wear hoodies! They sometimes give to Democrats! They have a surface-level social liberalism, in that they're fine with gay marriage and abortion! Republicans are always raving about how " woke" they supposedly are! You can trust these guys, right? We were told that this new class of pampered white men was different than the old: younger, more down-to-earth and more civic-minded. For years, Americans have been served up one celebrity tech billionaire after another, complete with reassurances that these titans of the digital industry are too smart to bog down with government regulation. ![]() ![]() The popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement, for instance, suggested that Americans were finally ready to question the stranglehold on our culture enjoyed by the ridiculously wealthy.Īmericans may still have no love of bankers, but alas, the myth of the genius billionaire came roaring back, stronger than ever, thanks to the tech industry. But the Great Recession rattled faith in the economic elite, brought on as it was by a bunch of very rich people making very stupid decisions. Donald Trump, for instance, benefited from this assumption, allowing the millions of viewers of "The Apprentice" to ignore telltale signs that he's a barking moron. It's been hard to shake those paternalistic fantasies that the rich are better than the rest of us: Smarter, more industrious, more prudent. After the banking crash of 2008, there was a brief moment when progressives could hope that the American cult of billionaire worship would end. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |