Louisiana Senator John Neely Kennedy Is Spot-On About Silicon Valley Bank

I don’t agree with Senator Kennedy much. Almost everything that he has said publicly since Trump emerged has been absurdly and blindly naive. His positions on the major social issues of our time indicate he wants to wage war on the young and on women. And, he seems to get his jollies by trying to stump Biden’s judicial nominees with simple first-year law school civil procedure questions about federal diversity jurisdiction.

While mostly bluster, he did show some signs of being a real Senator yesterday. He first interrogated Greg Becker, the Silicon Valley Bank CEO, appearing to know more about his bank’s exposures than he had himself, before telling him: "Mr. Becker, you made a really stupid bet that went bad."

After Becker claimed that SVB’s demise was wholly the result of an “unprecedented” bank run driven by social media (something I suggested wasn’t the case here), Kennedy replied: "This wasn't unprecedented. …. You put all of your eggs in one basket. Unless you were living on the International Space Station, you could see interest rates were rising and you weren't hedged."

Kennedy also suggested that Becker failed to make any effort to save the bank because he had already cashed out and would have had very little himself to financial gain through a financial transaction or acquisition.

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Quite extraordinarily, Becker didn’t apologize to other banks or the government during the course of the Senate hearing. Instead, he apologized to his customers who were wholly indemnified to the detriment of the other banks and the government.

I also do not agree with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren about everything. However, I agree with her position that Becker needs to be investigated and that the government should enact laws providing for the claw back of executive compensation where there is a bank failure.