On Thursday morning, The New York Times published a remarkably ridiculous "fact-check" targeting "conservative pundits" who cited "wokeness" as a reason Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed last week. It's remarkable only in the sense the Gray Lady would attempt to provide their preferred political party political cover in the wake of the worst bank failure in the U.S. since the Great Depression using such an intellectually weak argument.
Malinformation, misinformation and disinformation are staples within and between the pages of the Times. Hell, widespread suffering from illusory truth effect is now a critical condition to their business model.
But the collapse of SVB—the 16th largest bank in the U.S.—is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. As of December 31, 2022, the Federal Reserve estimated SVB to have $209 billion in assets. When Washington Mututal failed on September 25, 2008, the bank had $307 billion in assets. That failure dwarfed the prior largest at Indymac Bank, F.S.B. ($31 billion) on July 11, 2008.
Historically, bank failures are very uncommon. Yet, the second and third largest on record both just occurred in the span of a few days. On March 14, just two days after the collapse of SVB, Signature Bank surpassed Indymac and the August 2009 collapse of Colonial Bank ($26 billion) to claim the third largest bank failure in U.S. history at $110 billion.
That just doesn't happen. It didn't even happen during the Great Recession. In other words, this is cause for serious concern and Americans deserve more serious discourse. Unforunately, here is how the Times prefaced their "fact-check".