Silicon Valley Bank
A wafer-thin covering of varnish
Civilization. In a story carried here in Belgium today, we read the words of Anthony Godfroid, counsel in Belgium’s Sanda Dia student hazing trial. As he watches the defendants file past him in their Sunday finery along a courtroom corridor, he says to a reporter: “Beschaving is een flinterdun laagje vernis” — civilisation is a wafer-thin cover of varnish.
“Make banking boring again. There’s no good reason banks should be investing their depositors’ money for profit” (Robert Reich on the Silicon Valley and Signature crashes).
You can view either as cynical, as plain wrong, or as truthful.
Civilisation is a wafer-thin cover of varnish.
Reveal someone’s rot and, yes, it is. You wonder how you’re so easily duped.
But, try to add a protective layer that will stop that rot, well, then, you’d think it was elephant hide.
Sir Thomas More achieved sainthood, and that’s never achieved easily. In the play about his demise (A Man For All Seasons), he has the following exchange as he dismisses his servant because his dispute with the king has rendered him penniless:
- I shall miss you, Matthew.
- No-o-o. You never had much time for me, sir. You see through me, sir, I know that.
- I shall miss you, Matthew; I shall miss you.
In another scene, Norfolk argues with Cromwell, who wants to pin a bribe on More:
- Goddammit he was the only judge since Cato who didn’t accept bribes. When was there last a Chancellor whose possessions after three years in office totalled one hundred pounds and a gold chain.
That’s the price of sainthood: one hundred pounds and a gold chain. I like the ring of “Saint Chase Manhattan.” I wonder if there will ever be a banking executive who is canonised?
Image: Matthew will be missed. As will Thomas.