What, me worry? No need to panic over bank collapse.
Bank customers and people with 401(k) plans and other retirement savings invested in the stock market should be concerned about last week’s sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Concern is allowed, but there’s no need to panic.
We should be vigilant about the possibility of bad actors seeking to create chaos by whipping up fears of bank runs, market crashes and other financial mayhem.
Remember, some doomsayers might profit by encouraging people to lose their minds.
We all know that spouting sky-is-falling nonsense like Chicken Little is a great way to boost page views and gain followers on social media. Common consumers might get scared into thinking they should withdraw all their money from their banks and hide it under their mattresses.
“It’s not a time to pull your money out of the bank,” a financial expert told Associated Press.
The possibility of panic taking hold is more worrisome now than during past crises because many people have shown they are prone to believing conspiracy theories and other crazy talk.
That’s because everything from public health to public education to public safety has become politicized. Just about everyone sees how the nation is split along partisan lines. Conflict makes money, and some want to keep us divided and focused on our differences.
Mainstream media have done a poor job setting people straight because they want to appear fair and give both sides equal time. This is the proper approach when everyone is acting in good faith. But when people on one side promote outlandish fallacies, they need to be fact checked in real time.
Opportunists with no shame or regard for the well being of others will do anything to score political points during a crisis. The majority
of the population is sane and knows there is no reason to fear the world’s financial system is in imminent danger of collapse.
However, those who eagerly chase balderdash down rabbit holes should give the rest of us reason to pause.
Now more than ever it is important to get information from reliable sources. Disguising entertainment as news was never a good idea, but it did make a lot of people rich. The truth is that many entertainers have deliberately presented false information for the sake of ratings and profits.
These tactics for the sake of monetary and political gain have produced real-world casualties. Many worry about loved ones who have fallen prey to cultlike movements that appear intent on sowing chaos. Bad actors succeed in exploiting the gullible because their conspiracies are often
rooted in a grain of truth.
In the old days, people who shook their fists at clouds or yelled at their televisions were fairly limited in the amount of harm they could cause. Nowadays, however, some of them have massive followings on social media.
Rumors and misinformation have always fueled bank runs and market crashes.
Now we have to worry that someone with a Twitter account could cause panic by typing a message in all capital letters and watching it spread like wildfire.
Those with a firm grip on reality have watched haplessly while inhabitants of Fantasyland have gained influence. These purveyors of prevarication keep gaining strength because of the lack of consequences for telling lies.
A common trait among these miscreants is a tendency to appeal to emotions. They want their audiences to get fired up and whipped into frenzies. Their followers should be outraged, I tell you. The more upset they get, the better.
This dynamic causes particular concern when anxiety grips the global financial system. The situation seemed to stabilize
Thursday as stock values for Credit Suisse and other banks recovered.
The important takeaway is that cooler heads prevail at times like this. Reasonable and rational thinkers must continue to outnumber carpetbaggers hoping to separate fools from their money.
The lesson of Silicon
Valley Bank’s collapse and other volatility in the financial sector is that there is no need to panic. Stock markets have always increased in value over time and the safest thing to do with your wealth is to leave it alone and forget about it.