Last week, my wife, Terre, told me that a local bank was closing that day because of a new storm and possible flooding heading our way.

We both said: “Oh, no! Are they insolvent, too?” But — whew — it was just an “atmospheric river,” not insolvency!

However, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse is creepy news. Didn’t we just have the big Crash of 2008? Didn’t we have a big crash in 1929, followed by the Great Depression?

Didn’t we solve this recurring banking crisis situation when the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted after the 2008 crash?

Before I get to why, I also want to mention that the bank board and executives of Silicon Valley Bank also gave themselves a load of bonuses when they knew the bank was collapsing, but just before the government took over and guaranteed al the depositors’ money.

That’s what also happened in 2008. 

I am getting to the part about why I think all this craziness happens. But first, a side note that leads to the main point: Why do some people say they “hate big government”?

I am sure some of the depositors in Silicon Valley Bank “hated big government,” but they will have no problem retrieving the deposits that the government protected for them!

Many politicians — mostly Republicans — run on the “hate big government” campaign slogan as well to get elected to that government!

This is not to trash Republicans. It is meant, however, to paint a really big picture of why things happen.

I want to link bank crashes to politics to people’s attitudes about money to our fear of death to our failure to determine the meaning or purpose of our own lives. Does all this connect?

Here’s how the story goes:

• The owners and executives of banks — those who got the bonuses — and rich people in general (not all) will always fund and vote for those who will protect their money.
• They fund elections of those who run on “hate big government” and “tax breaks for the rich” platforms — generally Republicans (not all).
• The Dodd-Frank Act, signed into law in 2010, would have prevented this crash.
• Then-President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress revised it in 2018, releasing midsized banks like Silicon Valley Bank from strict capital requirements that bigger banks must have.

This leads to a deeper level of questioning. Why does it seem that people with a lot of money are so interested in protecting it and getting more?

The only answer I can figure is that — bluntly — they don’t have a life. They (not all) don’t seem to have a broader answer to the purpose of life other than: More money will make me happier.

It becomes a never-ending quest: “If I can only double my money, then I will be happy!”

Maybe for some, it is more like: “Let me keep getting more money, and then maybe I will think about a world that works for everyone. If not, maybe my kids will figure out how to create a world that works for everyone (with the money and values they inherit from me).”

That leads to the ultimate question: Why do we accumulate? I think the answer is we create the fantasies of accumulation in order to avoid the reality of death.

Games are made up, invented based on a pretense. For example, getting a ball through a hoop more times than the other team does is very important.

In the big game of life, many invent the pretense that money is what is most important: Let’s pretend that money is important and that we are not going to die.

Final question: Why do we live in this pretense of the importance of money? I suspect that we (not all of us) haven’t declared what our purpose here is.

Not that anyone would actually say my life is about money and its accumulation, but if not, what is your purpose in life? 

That’s my simple explanation of why we will continue to have bank crashes. What’s yours? What’s in your personal, deep-pocket wallet? What is your purpose in life?