For decades, the dominant mantra of Silicon Valley's powerful has been that government is just a drag on their innovative spirit. Get regulators off our backs, they've argued, and we'll improve people's lives to an indescribable degree.
Not at the moment. The same investors and entrepreneurs who argued for less government and less regulation in the past successfully lobbied for a government bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, which failed Friday as a result of astoundingly imprudent business practices.
Driving their demands were the financing issues facing thousands of SVB corporate and individual customers who collectively had more than $150 billion of their cash on deposit at the bank under conditions that left it largely uninsured against the bank's collapse.
