Silicon Valley exists to destroy jobs—let it burn w/Malcolm Harris

The dramatic fall of Silicon Valley Bank in the span of a single week has sent reverberations throughout the financial system and growing fears of bank failures. SVB over-invested in mortgage loans and treasury bonds to deal with a glut of capital brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, assuming these assets were secure as long as interest rates stayed low. In the past year, interest rates began to rise, making the assets SVB purchased worse less than what they bought them for. A bank failure could have been avoided, had a panic not spread among tech investors fueled by the likes of Peter Thiel. While almost none of the money at risk of loss belonged to workers, the $124 billion bailout package swiftly delivered by the federal government comes directly from our pockets. What's more, if past boom-and-bust cycles are any sign, Silicon Valley as a whole will only grow richer and more powerful from this crisis—and in the process drive economic changes that will harm workers further. Author Malcolm Harris joins TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez for a special look at the Silicon Valley Bank collapse through the lens of Big Tech's long anti-labor history.

Malcolm Harris is an American journalist and contributing editor of The New Inquiry. His newest book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World examines the rise of Silicon Valley.

Post-Production: Jules Taylor

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