Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would direct Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to consider designating 777,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii as a national marine sanctuary – Elon Musk rebuked the White House for touting its efforts to fight climate change while at the same time contending with a banking crisis.
“Umm… the banks are melting,” Musk tweeted in response to Biden, earning far more engagement than the original post from the commander-in-chief.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has since scrambled to reassure markets that the banking system remains sound and that the Biden administration would meaningfully prevent bank runs. This is due to Silicon Valley Bank collapsing as a result of Federal Reserve actions to hike interest rates in an attempt to combat record inflation witnessed in the two years since Biden assumed office. These rate hikes have caused assets in the banking system to drop $2 trillion below their book value according to analysts at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has criticized the Biden administration’s focus on racial and sexual diversity over competence in their efforts to create a more equitable federal workforce.
In response to news that the next vice chair of the Federal Reserve would be appointed with diversity factors in mind, Musk warned: “This affects the lives of everyone. Maximum skill with monetary policy is extremely important in this role”.
The Biden administration operates under a “whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities” which has included forming “agency equity teams” to ensure federal workforces are sufficiently diverse. Critics insist that weighing racial and sexual minority status in hiring processes detracts from hiring qualified candidates.
