(PresidentialDaily.org)- Before it was shut down by federal regulators earlier this month, Silicon Valley Bank donated millions of dollars to various social justice initiatives that were related to the Black Lives Matter movement.
A report issued by the conservative-leaning Claremont Institute revealed SVB donated a total of $73.4 million to various organizations focused on social justice, and directly to Black Lives Matter groups, after George Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Those donations occurred over several years, the Claremont Institute found.
It seems that donating to ultra-liberal causes was a common theme for the banks that failed overnight recently. Signature Bank, which is based in New York and similarly collapsed suddenly, donated more than $850,000 over a few years to groups that had similar aims.
When Floyd was killed over the summer of 2020, SVB said that it would increase the commitment it was making to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” also commonly known as DEI. Greg Becker, the company’s CEO, said in an August 2020 report that two-thirds of the SVB’s workforce met a goal the company had set for diversity.
The bank also provided a matching program on employees that focused on “pandemic response, social justice, sustainability, and supporting women, black and Latinx emerging talent, and other underrepresented groups.”
Since the bank collapsed suddenly – forcing the federal government to step in and guarantee all the money that depositors put into the bank – conservative critics have highly criticized SVB for focusing more on “woke” policies rather than focusing on the potential red flags that were flying everywhere that could’ve saved the bank instead of lead to its ultimate downfall.
Recently, Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky spoke to Fox News about the topic and said:
“[SVB is] one of the most woke banks in [its] quest for the ESG-type policy and investing. This could be a trend, and there are consequences for bad Democrat policy.”
Democrats have tried to pass the buck onto Republicans, blaming former President Donald Trump for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the others. Liberals have insisted that the fact that Trump approved the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act directly resulted in the collapse of these banks.
That Act rolled back some of the major regulations that the Obama administration enacted following the financial crisis in 2008.
All of that is just a lot of rhetoric, though, as even some Democrats have disagreed strongly with that line of thinking. Barney Frank and former Democratic member of the House from Massachusetts, for instance, said the Trump administration’s rollbacks on regulation didn’t play any role in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank or any others that might happen in the future.
In typical Democrat fashion, the party is avoiding taking responsibility for any wrongdoing in this case, instead trying to blame a past administration for its own failures to monitor financial institutions and prevent just this sort of thing from happening.
