Two Dopey, Woke, DEI Focused Women Helped Tank Silicon Valley Bank

by James S. Soviero

Jay Ersapah was head of Silicon Valley Bank’s risk management.  Mary Daly is president and CEO of the San Francisco Fed.  As misfortune would have it, both proved to be woke, dopey women in positions of power who were much more focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion than keeping SVB solvent.

Here’s some background on these ladies that should awaken all of us.

Ms. Ersapah, far from taking the title of her job seriously, was apparently much more concerned with spearheading such initiatives as a month-long Pride campaign, a blog emphasizing mental health awareness for LGBTQ+ youth, and co-chairing the SVB European LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group.

Encouraged by an equally unserious board made up of an improv performer along with mega-donors to the Clintons and other top Dems, they happily put your money where their virtue-signaling mouths were by donating $73 million to Black Lives Matter groups.

At meetings, Ersapah would talk about what it was like to be “a queer person of color and a first-generation immigrant from a working-class background.”  Apparently, that pre-empted further discussion regarding her competency; until Jay Ersapah, the box-checking risk manager, allowed SVB to make an unbelievably elementary error banks have been studiously avoiding since the 1980s by lending long and borrowing short.

Jay apparently found a kindred spirit in regional fed chief Mary Daly. Openly gay, she’s a protege of Janet Yellen. Daly prioritized climate change, Black Lives Matter, inequities between blacks and whites, LGBTQ+ rights, and a host of other woke social-justice issues that have nothing to do with finance.

Mary Daly’s Fed bio gushes she’s committed to “understanding the economic and financial risks of climate change and inequities.”

“What Black voices have I lifted up? Equity & inclusion begins with me. #GeorgeFloyd.” She also posted selfies with local Black Lives Matter activists.

She said she was inspired by Marxian economist Gene Wagner, who “has mentored me my whole life.”

Daly missed all the warning signs of runaway inflation, saying in 2021, “I am not thinking that we have…inflation around the corner.”

About a year ago, she still denied we were suffering from high prices. “It’s not what I see.”  Daly continued, “I don’t feel the pain of inflation anymore.”

She concluded, “….I don’t find myself in a space where I have to make trade-offs because I have enough, and many, many Americans have enough.” Mary Daly “Antoinette” makes $442,000 yearly.

In the end, both wokesters made the same dopey mistake.  They chased DEI fever dreams while ignoring SVB making risky bets on long-term mortgage bonds, even as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was telegraphing his intent to jack up interest rates in 75-basis-point increments.

In financial institutions polluted by social justice warriors, the best and brightest need not even apply.

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