Beau Biden’s widow and Hunter’s ex-lover Hallie Biden is the “new” family business member who received a $25,000 cash payment on March 27, 2017, from family associate Robinson Walker’s LLC regarding a Chinese venture , the House Oversight Committee revealed Thursday.
Walker, who has described himself as someone who “generally [has] been acting as a surrogate for H[unter] around the country and abroad pursuing opportunities,” received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK Limited, which was divvied up between four Biden family members: Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unknown Biden. According to the committee, Hallie is the new member identified who was previously a mystery . There is still an unknown “Biden” in the bank records. No first name is listed for the fourth Biden.
President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, step off Air Force One, Saturday, February 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
“Hallie is the president’s son’s widow and ex-lover of Hunter. She is also widely reported to be a school counselor. It is unknown why Hallie would receive $25,000 from Walker’s LLC obtained from the family’s Chinese venture with State Energy HK Limited. It is also unknown what services, if any, she rendered for the money,” the committee stated.
It is also unclear who the account holder is for the bank account titled simply, “Biden,” according to the committee.
It is notable that State Energy HK Limited was named by Comer as an entity funneling money to the Bidens. State Energy HK Limited was under the control of Chinese company CEFC China Energy’s chairman, Ye Jianming, and was affiliated with CEFC. Ye, State Energy HK Limited, and CEFC were closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is seen in front of a newspaper page with a photograph of Hunter Biden and his father President Joe Biden during the Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media hearing with former Twitter employees before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability at the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday February 08, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Hunter made huge money from Ye. In 2017, Hunter earned a $1 million legal retainer from Jianming’s company. He also received a large diamond from Ye worth an estimated $80,000 in February 2017. Since 2018, Ye has been under detention in China on charges of bribery.
In 2017, the Biden family had also negotiated a deal with CEFC in which Joe Biden (“Big Guy”) would receive a ten percent equity stake in the joint venture with Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Another Hunter Biden business partner, James Gilliar, dubbed Joe Biden the “big guy” in his May 13, 2017, email to Bobulinski, who has confirmed “the big guy” was a reference to Joe Biden. The 2017 email revealed that a business deal between Bobulinski, the Biden family, and high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party would include 10 percent “held by H for the big guy ?”
CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming (Photo: CEFC)
In a memo obtained by Breitbart News, the committee outlined how much of the $3 million flowed from State Energy HK Limited to the Biden family members:
On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office— State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC. At the time of the wire, Rob Walker’s business account had a balance of approximately $159,000.
The next day, Robinson Walker, LLC wired $1,065,000 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group (EEIG) in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar. Gilliar was a business partner of Hunter Biden and involved in foreign transactions with the Biden family.
After the Robinson Walker, LLC account received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited, Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months. The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified as “Biden.”
After the Chinese company wired Robinson Walker, LLC the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Notably, EEIG, James Gilliar’s affiliated company, received almost the exact same amount— $1,065,000—on March 2, 2017. From the bank records, it appears that the Biden family received approximately one-third of the money obtained from the China wire.
Comer has pledged to unearth China’s financial ties to the Biden family and to ascertain whether Joe Biden is compromised by the Communist Chinese Party
“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) said about the money funnels. “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires Profiles in Corruption New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality .
THINK BANKSTERS' RENT GIRL MAXINE WATERS!
Judicial Watch investigated the scandal and obtained documents from the U.S. Treasury related to the controversial bailout. The famously remiss House Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating and punishing corrupt lawmakers like Waters, found that she committed no wrongdoing . The panel bought Waters’ absurd story that she allocated the money as part of her longtime work to promote opportunity for minority-owned businesses and lending in underserved communities even though her husband’s bank was located thousands of miles away from the south Los Angeles neighborhoods she represents in Congress.
Everybody wins when Maxine sells her
endorsement, Maxine's family with cash, and
others with cash turned into newfound power.
The only losers are the voters, who get these
misleading junk mail flyers in their mail and
vote on arguably false premises.
Sam Bankman-Fried: Why isn't that guy in jail? By Monica Showalter
Democrat mega-donor Sam Bankman-Fried, whose cryptocurrency platform FTX just collapsed in a hail of fraud allegations, pretty well walks around free to do what he pleases, out in the palmy Bahamas.
That raises questions as to what is going on here, why that guy isn't, like Bernie Madoff or the assorted Enron characters, in jail for his misappropriation of customer funds from his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, through a secret "back-door," to his Alameda Research hedge fund, run by his kinky-weird ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison .
FTX did, after all, insist to its cryptocurrency platform customers that it would never use their deposits for speculative trading purposes.
According to Coindesk, an industry publication of the cryptocurrency and related fields :
...FTX and other crypto exchanges are not banks. They do not (or should not) do bank-style lending, so even a very acute surge of withdrawals should not create a liquidity strain. FTX had specifically promised customers it would never lend out or otherwise use the crypto they entrusted to the exchange.
Well, it did.
The kinds of crimes now alleged about the now-bankrupt firm include secretly spiriting customer funds to Alameda for trading purposes, use of FTX assets as collateral so that Alameda could borrow and risk even more on its own behalf, immense personal loans to FTX executives which likely signaled criminal intent-- with Coindesk calling this one a biggie:
The FTX situation has more smoking guns than a shooting range in Texas, but you might call this one the smoking bazooka – a glaringly obvious sign of criminal intent. It’s still unclear how the bulk of those personal loans were used, but clawing the expenditures back will likely be a major task for liquidators.
...bailing out other troubled cryptocurrency exchanges with FTX exchange money, drawing praise as a sort of J.P. Morgan protector of the crypto industry, and the purchase of a tiny U.S. bank in Washington state, which Coindesk compared to the activities of the beyond-filthy Pakistani Bank of Credit & Commerce International's activities, which also attempted to buy itself a U.S. bank, in its case for money-laundering purposes.
All this, while claiming he had no idea what was going on at his company, and drawing lots of fawning press as a result of his help to his leftist charities and Democrats. Coindesk lays out some of the grosser ones :
It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors. That’s why a recent New York Times interview was widely derided for seeming to frame FTX’s collapse as the result of mismanagement rather than malfeasance . A Wall Street Journal article bemoaned the loss of charitable donations from FTX, arguably propping up Bankman-Fried’s strategic philanthropic pose. Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, court chronicler of the neoliberal status quo, seemed to whitewash his own entanglements by crediting Bankman-Fried’s money with helping Democrats in the 2020 elections – sidestepping the likelihood that the money was effectively embezzled.
The guy keeps getting good press despite his misuse of customer funds, which he ending up losing $10 billion of, spoonfeeding to the still-fawning media that he "made mistakes." Notice that Vox is happy to excuse him because he donated to Democrats, and the WSJ seems to be more concerned about these leftist charities, which promoted hideous ideas like "ranked choice voting," than they are about the people who lost their life savings. Some of the leftist press itelf , including vox, was funded by Bankman-Fried, and now is out of its promised grants from him and not happy about it.
That may be some kind of means of warding prosecutors off, the oodles of good press, which makes prosecutors look like bad guys if they go after him.
Prosecutors actually have bigger problems, though, in that in previous cases, such as that of Madoff, the bad guys admitted their culpability and provided their receipts. Bankman-Fried isn't doing that even as everything he says sets off bee-ess meters, as Jim Geraghty notes in his piece in National Review. Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, wrote a good, knowledgeable piece about the problems they are having on just legal issues in putting this guy away.
What does an investigation of an international financial fraud like this look like? To simplify matters greatly, the government is going to be looking for three things — documents, witnesses, and data — to determine whether SBF or those around him committed fraud. Let’s take these in turn.
He then goes into the problems with all of those matters, in documentations, witnesses, and data, plus the fact that the FTX entity and Alameda Research, are both based in the Bahamas, meaning, outside the U.S. regulatory framework, though they can still bring prosecutions based on U.S. customer losses. Emails may be on foreign servers, Google and other U.S. big tech companies may not be involved in those emails, the emails may have been deleted, the ledgers themselves may be inaccurate, and a lot of people inside the company didn't know what was going on, which will make the investigation take a lot of time.
Other thorny investigations, such as that of Elizabeth Holmes, took years, and this one could, too.
But letting this guy walk around free is problematic, too, because he is busy getting himself good press to turn that bad narrative about himself around so that the prosecutor don't dare act against him and the length of the investigation gives him time to do it.
What we may see is him donating even harder to Democrats than he already has (to the tune of $40 million) perhaps now through shell corporations to keep the lawmen at bay while the fawning press will continue to serve as his apologists. The press, as one commentator noted, devotes more time to 'exposing' Elon Musk, who spends his own money, than it does to SBF, who spends other people's money and loses it. We saw a lot of that going on with the Jeffrey Epstein case -- the knowledge that he had stuff on many prominent Democrats and others seems to have bought some kind of political protection and kept prosecutors at bay, for a time at least, with the Caribbean ensconcement another useful layer.
It goes to show the toxic influence of these donations to Democrats, and some Republicans, too, although those seem to have been done through an ignorant, unwitting, lieutenant . Bankman-Fried was the Democrats' second-largest donor, and all that he did seems to have been done on stolen money. The Democrats who took this money should be forced to make whole the defrauded investors since misappropriated money hardly becomes the property of the person who takes it.
But that might be too much at this stage. What's important now is that Bankman-Fried not be allowed to prop up any more Democrats or their odious wokester causes.
Image: Screen shot from YouTube video posted by Cointelegraph, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0
Bankrupt cryptocurrency firm FTX, whose former CEO Sam Bankman Fried spent nearly $40 million to help Democrats in this year's midterm elections, now owes its creditors at least $3 billion.
Judicial Watch investigated the scandal and obtained documents from the U.S. Treasury related to the controversial bailout. The famously remiss House Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating and punishing corrupt lawmakers like Waters, found that she committed no wrongdoing . The panel bought Waters’ absurd story that she allocated the money as part of her longtime work to promote opportunity for minority-owned businesses and lending in underserved communities even though her husband’s bank was located thousands of miles away from the south Los Angeles neighborhoods she represents in Congress.
CRYPTO - Was FTX Simply a Fraudulent Criminal Scam? $10BN Customer Funds & $2BN Investor Money Lost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER4vt5ei7sg
MAXINE WATERS IN BED WITH SAM.... JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!
FTX Disaster - 7 Unbelievable Bankruptcy Discoveries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJn6IiYid6A
T he 30-year-old entrepreneur donated $5 million to a super PAC that supported President Joe Biden in 2020 and $40 million this cycle, largely to Democrats. He contributed $6 million to the House Majority PAC, $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC, and nearly $900,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
Everybody wins when Maxine sells her endorsement, Maxine's
family with cash, and others with cash turned into newfound
power. The only losers are the voters, who get these
misleading junk mail flyers in their mail and vote on arguably
false premises.
What a racket this is for people like Waters. Still no sign of any
legislation to stop this practice. MONICA SHOWALTER
BELOW IS THE IMAGE OF BANKSTERS' RENT GIRL MAXINE. HARDLY SUPRISING HER HUSBAND IS A BANKSTER!
Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Cronies Gave $300k to House Committee Members Investigating Him House Financial Services Committee chair Maxine Waters has dodged questions about crypto titan's donations
Sam Bankman-Fried a
Sam Bankman-Fried Aimed to Outpace George Soros as Largest Democrat Donor Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Images SEAN MORAN
28 Nov 2022 0
2:21
Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tried to build a political empire to rival Democrat megadonor George Soros.
Puck News reporter Theodore Schleifer wrote that Bankman-Fried personally bought a Democrat startup, Deck, spending roughly $4 to $5 million to buy out the existing investors to the Democrat analytics firm. Bankman-Fried reportedly heard about the startup from Mind the Gap, a Democrat donor network founded by his mother, Barbara Bankman-Fried.
The purchase of Deck served as Bankman-Fried’s political scheme to be the “biggest donor in the Democratic Party,” even outshining Democrat megadonor.
Democrat megadonor George Soros on January 23, 2020 in Davos, eastern Switzerland. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame, co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, served as two of the largest donors to Republicans and Democrats last cycle. Bankman-Fried fell just below Soros as the largest Democrat donor.
Ryan Salame, co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets. (Twitter)
In all, Bankman-Fried donated roughly $40 million to Democrat politicians and PACs, while Salame gave about $23 million to Republicans and PACs supporting the GOP.
Puck News wrote that the former FTX CEO sought advisers and conducted data experiments to help Democrats in the 2024 election cycle:
I have previously reported that S.B.F.’s team was actively looking for future advisors to join them in drafting “plays” for the 2024 cycle, and that one of those ideas was to fund some more progressive organizations, for instance. Some of those plans were already underway. I have learned in recent days that S.B.F. was already quietly funding some experiments across the Democratic ecosystem, such as randomized-controlled trials that might have yielded data that could help Democrats in 2024, according to two people familiar with the work, by assessing the impact of things like community newsletters, Facebook ads, and so-called “relational organizing.”
In all, the report suggested that Bankman-Fried might have spent roughly $100 million, but according to Schleifer, “That could be an undercount.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3 .
Crypto Firm Led by Democratic Megadonor Owes Creditors $3 Billion Sam Bankman-Fried / Getty Images Washington Free Beacon Staff • November 21, 2022 1:32 pm
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Bankrupt cryptocurrency firm FTX, whose former CEO Sam Bankman Fried spent nearly $40 million to help Democrats in this year's midterm elections, now owes its creditors at least $3 billion.
The firm, which was once valued at $32 billion, filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, leaving a total of $3.1 billion owed to its top 50 creditors, the Washington Post reports :
The revelations, which came in a filing to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware late Saturday, offer a striking portrait of the sheer number of entities that had considerably invested in, lent money to, or otherwise engaged with a three-year-old company that had done little to demonstrate it could properly safeguard the assets entrusted to it. Its top 50 creditors are owed a total of $3.1 billion, the filing showed, with the largest due $226 million.
The names of the creditors were redacted. […]
In a separate filing Saturday, new FTX chief executive John J. Ray said the company will seek sales and other forms of capitalization to ensure that as many creditors as possible get their money. He noted that some of the subsidiaries of FTX "have solvent balance sheets, responsible management, and valuable franchises," which could facilitate that process. Some 130 FTX sister companies are part of the bankruptcy filing.
Cofounder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who resigned when FTX filed for bankruptcy, and other FTX executives gave a total of $300,351 to nine members of the House Financial Services Committee. The largest donations went to Democrats working on regulating the crypto industry, the Washington Free Beacon found. Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried pledged $1 billion to Democratic campaigns in the 2022 midterm election. Now the crypto scion has lost all of his $16 billion net worth.
In the court filing, FTX listed one million potential creditors. Ray said the company is seeking sales and other forms of capitalization to ensure that its creditors get their money, but the process may prove difficult as Ray found serious inadequacies in FTX's record-keeping.
"The main companies in the Alameda Silo and the Ventures Silo did not keep complete books and records of their investments and activities," Ray wrote in the filing, referring to some of Bankman-Fried's entities. He added, "One of the most pervasive failures of the FTX.com business in particular is the absence of lasting records of decision-making."
Published under: Bankruptcy , Crypto , Democratic Donors
Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Donated over $300,000 to Lawmakers Investigating Him
601 Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty; David Dee Delgado/Getty
SEAN MORAN
19 Nov 2022 0
4:03
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and his cofounders donated over $300,000 to nine lawmakers who are now investigating the company for wrongdoing.
Bankman-Fried and his cofounders donated $300,351 to nine members of the House Financial Services Committee; the largest donations were to members of the Digital Assets Working Group, which is working on cryptocurrency regulation.
The House Financial Services Committee announced earlier this week that the committee would investigate any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried and FTX.
Only Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL) said he would return a $2,900 donation from Bankman-Fried.
Although Bankman-Fried has donated to Republicans, 95 percent of the donations went to Democrats and Democrat campaign committees.
Bankman-Fried’s PAC, Protect Our Future PAC, spent $199,851 backing Garcia. The disgraced CEO and his brother, Gabriel, gave $40,300 to Rep. Ritchie Torres’s (D-NY) campaign and two of his political committees, the Torres Victory Fund and La Bamba PAC. Bankman-Fried and his head of the regulatory division gave $16,600 to Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). Other Bankman-Fried employees gave $500 to Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), and $9,100 to Rep. Sean Caster (D-IL).
Torres, Gottheimer, Himes, and Casten were all members of the Digital Assets Working Group.
Bankman-Fried also gave $11,600 to Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and $5,000 to the super PAC for Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA).
Bankman-Fried also generously donated to Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and John Boozman (R-AR), who have pushed a cryptocurrency regulation bill, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, a bill that Bankman-Fried backs.
The Washington Free Beacon reported :
His intensive lobbying campaign appeared to pay off before his company’s demise. He supported legislation proposed by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) and Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) that would have subjected the crypto industry to regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not the larger and aggressive Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bankman-Fried donated $5,800 to Stabenow’s campaign in February and $20,800 to her joint fundraising committee in January. Bankman-Fried gave $5,800 to Boozman in January and $5,800 to committee member Sen. John Hoeven (R., N.D.) in June. He gave a combined $31,000 to campaigns and joint fundraising committees tied to Sens. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Tina Smith (D., Minn.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), who serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur donated $5 million to a super PAC that supported President Joe Biden in 2020 and $40 million this cycle, largely to Democrats. He contributed $6 million to the House Majority PAC, $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC, and nearly $900,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) has dodged questions on whether Democrats should return donations from Bankman-Fried and his associates.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3 .
Waters Has Shoveled Over $1 Million in Campaign Cash to Daughter Joe Schoffstall -
Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) has now dished out more than $1 million in campaign payments to her daughter following the 2020 elections.
Karen Waters has pocketed $1.13 million for providing an array of services for her mother's campaign since 2003. The majority of the cash is for her role in running a controversial slate-mailer operation, in which California politicians gave money to Waters's campaign in exchange for mailers bearing her endorsement.
The mailers have become increasingly lucrative for the younger Waters over the years. During the 2020 cycle, her payments hit a high of $240,000 . That's significantly more than the $90,000 her firm, Progressive Connections, took in during the 2006 election cycle. The Federal Election Commission gave Waters the green light for the mailer operation in 2004.
While slate mailers are commonplace in states like California and Oregon, the practice is extremely rare at the federal level. In fact, Waters appears to be the only federal politician to use a slate-mailer operation. As such, the arrangement between her and her daughter has led to complaints from watchdog groups asking the FEC to audit the campaign.
Many prominent California politicians have paid to be featured on the mailers. Vice President Kamala Harris twice shelled out tens of thousands from her campaigns for a spot on the mailers. California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) and former senator Barbara Boxer (D.) have likewise dished out cash for Waters's support.
The practice has received criticism from local media."While some of these mailers reflect the earnest political values of the organizations that put them together, many are pay-to-play money-makers that blur the line between endorsement, paid advertisement and extortion," CalMatters wrote last year.
Waters's campaign did not return a request for comment.
Maxine Waters Pays Daughter Hundreds of Thousands in Campaign Funds
Rep. Maxine Waters's (D., Calif.) campaign paid her daughter hundreds of thousands in campaign funds during the 2020 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Karen Waters received $240,000 from her mother’s campaign for a variety of campaign activities, including soliciting campaign contributions from other candidates in exchange for the congresswoman's endorsement on campaign mailers, Fox News reported .
This is not the first time Maxine Waters has used the controversial practice to raise funds for her campaign, and her campaign has paid her daughter for years to help manage the scheme.
From 2006 through 2020, Waters’s campaign shelled out more than $1 million to her daughter—either directly or through Progressive Connections, Karen Waters’s public relations firm—for producing what are known as slate mailers featuring her mother's endorsement of California candidates. Karen Waters raked in more than $200,000 from her mother’s campaign during the 2018 election cycle, the Washington Free Beacon first reported .
Watchdog groups have filed complaints asking the FEC to audit Waters's campaign for using the mailers. The campaign has faced criticism for the mailers since 2010, when one watchdog group first reported that the congresswoman had been paying her daughter to run the operation .
California Democrats including Governor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Waters’s campaign for the endorsement mailers.
Though the FEC caps individual campaign contributions at $2,800, payments for the slate mailers are considered "reimbursements" for Waters’s endorsement. The commission issued an advisory opinion in 2004 allowing Waters permission to run the operation through her campaign.
Waters was first elected to Congress in 1990 and serves California's 43rd Congressional District.
Maxine Waters Unfit to Chair House Financial Services Committee Considering her record and documented history of poor ethical and moral fitness, it’s outrageous that Maxine Waters is up for chair of the ultra-powerful House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the country’s banking system, economy, housing, and insurance. With Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives, come January the 14-term California congresswoman is expected to head the committee, which also has jurisdiction over monetary policy, international finance, and efforts to combat terrorist financing. Throughout her storied political career, Waters has
been embroiled in numerous controversies,
including abusing her power to enrich family
members, getting a communist dictator to harbor a
cop-murdering Black Panther fugitive still wanted
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
accusing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
of selling crack cocaine in black neighborhoods. A few months ago, the 80-year-old Democrat from Los Angeles encouraged violence against Trump administration cabinet members. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said at a summer rally in Los Angeles. Judicial Watch filed a House ethics complaint against Waters for encouraging violence against Trump Cabinet members. Among her most corrupt acts as a federal legislator is steering millions of federal bailout dollars to her husband’s failing bank, OneUnited. Waters allocated $12 million to the Massachusetts bank in which she and her board member husband held shares. OneUnited subsequently got shut down by the government and American taxpayers got stiffed for the millions. Judicial Watch investigated the scandal and obtained documents from the U.S. Treasury related to the controversial bailout. The famously remiss House Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating and punishing corrupt lawmakers like Waters, found that she committed no wrongdoing . The panel bought Waters’ absurd story that she allocated the money as part of her longtime work to promote opportunity for minority-owned businesses and lending in underserved communities even though her husband’s bank was located thousands of miles away from the south Los Angeles neighborhoods she represents in Congress. The reality is that without intervention by Waters OneUnited was an extremely unlikely candidate for a government bailout through the disastrous Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Treasury Department warned that it would only provide bailout funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending and OneUnited clearly didn’t meet that criteria. Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch detail the deplorable financial condition of OneUnited at the time of the government cash infusion. The records also show that, prior to the bailout, the bank received a “ less than satisfactory rating .” Incredibly, after that scandal Waters was chosen by her colleagues to hold a ranking position on the House Financial Services Committee she will soon chair. The only consequence for blowing $12 million on her husband’s failing bank was a slap on the hand to Waters’ chief of staff (her grandson) for violating House standards of conduct to help OneUnited. Waters, who represents some of Los Angeles’ poorest inner-city neighborhoods, has also helped family members make more than $1 million through business ventures with companies and causes that she has helped, according to her hometown newspaper. While she and her relatives get richer (she lives in a $4.5 million L os Angeles mansion), her constituents get poorer. The congresswoman was also embroiled in a fundraising scandal for skirting federal election rules with a shady gimmick that allows unlimited donations from certain contributors. Instead of raising most of her campaign funds from individuals or political action committees, Waters sells her endorsement to other politicians and political causes for as much as $45,000 a pop. It wouldn’t be right to part without also noting some of Waters’ international accolades. She has made worldwide headlines for her frequent trips to communist Cuba to visit her convicted cop-assassin friend, Joanne Chesimard, who appears on the FBI’s most wanted list and is also known by her Black Panther name of Assata Shakur. Chesimard was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted by a jury of the 1979 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. With the help of fellow cult members, she escaped from jail and fled to Cuba. Outraged U.S. lawmakers insisted she be extradited but Waters always stood by her side, likening the cop-assassin to civil rights leader Martin Luther King. In fact, Waters wrote Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro a letter to assure him that she was not part of the group of U.S. legislators who voted for a resolution to extradite the cop murderer. Waters told Castro that she opposed extradition because Chesimard was “politically persecuted” in the U.S. and simply seeking political asylum in Havana, where she still lives. In the 1980s Waters accused the CIA of selling crack cocaine to blacks in her south-central Los Angeles district to raise millions of dollars to support clandestine operations in Latin America, including a guerrilla army. During the infamous 1992 Los Angeles riots the congresswoman repeatedly excused the violent behavior that ironically destroyed the areas she represents in the House. She dismissed the severe beating of a white truck driver by saying the anger in her district was righteous. She also excused looters who stole from stores by saying they were simply mothers capitalizing on an opportunity to take some milk, bread, and shoes. Should this ethically and morally challenged individual, who has repeatedly displayed behavior unbecoming of a federal lawmaker, be at the helm of an influential congressional committee that oversees the financial sector ?
CLEARLY WE KNOW HOW MUCH BILLARY, HILLARY AND THE OBOMB MADE SERVICING CRIMINAL BANKSTERS. ALL PAID VIA 'SPEECH' FEES AT ABOUT $500k EACH. OBAMA PRIDED HIMSELF IN MAKING SURE NO CRIMINAL BANKSTER EVER WENT TO PRISON. MOST OF HIS BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO THIS DAY TO PLUNDER WITH IMPUNITY!
KAMALA HARRIS WAS WAITING ON THE SIDELINES IN CA AS A.G. SUCKING OFF WELLS FARGO AND 'KING OF FORECLOSURES' STEVEN MNUCHIN.
THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN FOUGHT AGAINST ENDING 'CONSULTANT FEES TO FAMILY MEMBERS' BRIBES AS HER PIMP HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM WAS DOLING OUT BIG MONEY TO BOXER SO SHE WOULD VOTE FOR ANYTHING THAT BENEFITED THE CRIME DUAL OF FEINSTEIN-BLUM.
FEINSTEIN IS A WHORE FOR RED CHINA, HAS SERVED THEM LONG FOR 'DEALS' THAT HER PIMP MADE. FEINSTEIN HAS LONG VOTED IN THE SENATE FOR ANYTHING THAT WOULD BENEFIT RED CHINA.
FEINSTEIN IS ALSO THE BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER IN U.S. HISTORY. SHE'S SO FUCKING CORRUPT SHE QUICKLY ENDORSED JOE BIDEN FOR THE PRESIDENCY, AFTER ALL, HE'S A FEINSTEIN CLONE.
Maxine Waters's paid-mailer racket snowballs By Monica Showalter
When we last visited Rep. Maxine Waters's hightly questionable 'slate-mailer' money-making racket in 2019, where candidates and causes get Waters's endorsement in exchange for cash, her daughter Karen who runs the thing had just pocketed $50,000.
Well, the operation seems to have gotten
bigger, and Karen appears to be richer, all from
mama Maxine's simple word of endorsement.
According to Fox News , citing federal election data and a 2018 report from the Washington Free Beacon :
The reelection of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters to another term in Congress last month proved to be something of a financial windfall for Karen Waters, the California Democrat's daughter, federal election data suggest.
Karen Waters received a total of about $240,000 from her 82-year-old mother’s campaign during the election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show.
The dollar figure appears to mirror what Karen Waters received during her mother’s previous campaign in 2018, when the daughter was paid “more than $200,000,” according to a November 2018 report by the Washington Free Beacon .
Which is nice work if you can get it. Seriously, this person makes $240,000 which is nearly equal to what the mayor of Los Angeles makes, or the average U.S. Senator makes , or Maxine herself makes as a House member at $ 174,000 a year . It's more than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes ( $223,500 ). It's certainly more than California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ( $210,000 ) makes.
All for the little task of assembling a mailer to fill the voters' junk mail takings and then the recycle bins in one part of one county, and collecting cash on the content. Running the country's largest state with the world's seventh largest economy, by contrast, is less important stuff. Karen Waters must be brilliant.
Which raises questions as to why Waters, a far left demogogue, is selling her endorsements for cash, and what the payers of these endorsements, are really getting for their money. We know the Waters machine is strong, but so strong as to merit inflated fees and salaries for Waters and her family? This is known as getting rich while in public office. Waters is the only one who's doing this sleazy machine-politics practice on a national scale, but don't imagine other Democrats aren't also looking to cash in.
Everybody wins when Maxine sells her
endorsement, Maxine's family with cash, and
others with cash turned into newfound power.
The only losers are the voters, who get these
misleading junk mail flyers in their mail and
vote on arguably false premises.
What a racket this is for people like Waters. Still no sign of any legislation to stop this practice.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Moody’s Chief Economist: Customers Will Ultimately Pay to Save SVB, Signature Bank Depositors
OBAMA'S BANKSTERS' RENT BOY HOLDER:
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors David McNew/Getty Images 2:43
Several Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) board of directors have donated thousands of dollars or have direct ties to prominent Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Banking Crisis just got WORSE. Fed Reports $400 BILLION in Losses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhRmTzXAtlc
It is now just over a month since a crisis erupted in the financial system with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the takeover and selloff of the Signature Bank and the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS.
A sign displays the name of Credit Suisse on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. [AP Photo/Seth Wenig] The demise of SVB, the 16th largest American bank, was the second largest in monetary terms in US history.
It was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) after $42 billion was withdrawn in a single day with $100 billion to be withdrawn the day after.
The Biden administration, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC appear to have quelled the storm with their emergency intervention to extend FDIC insurance to cover deposits over $250,000, questions are being raised about whether this was just a passing phenomenon or the sign of much worse to come.
Others are not so sure because the SVB problems were set off by interest rate hikes, carried out at the fastest pace in four decades, that are impacting the entire US banking and financial system. In other words, SVB was the expression of general problems now emerging.
In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) last week, International Monetary Fund chief economist Pierre Olivier Gourinchas recalled the events leading up to the global financial crisis of 2008.
“We can all remember the long time between the failure of an individual institutions, whether it was Bear Stearns or Countrywide. Every time, this was treated like an isolated incident, until it wasn’t.”
In a comment piece for the FT last Friday, entitled “After the easy money: a giant stress test for the financial system,” long-time columnist John Plender wrote that after the collapse of SVB there is “no consensus on whether the ensuing stress in North America and Europe has run its course or is a foretaste of things to come.”
He pointed out that while the problems of SVB and Credit Suisse were not the same, yet, “in their different ways, they demonstrate how the long period of super-low interest rates since the great financial crisis of 2007–09 introduced fragilities into the financial system while creating asset bubbles.”
And the longer monetary policy stayed lax, the more systemic risk increased, together with growing dependence on money creation and low rates.
Plender also cited research by Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya, respectively the former governor and deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, which showed that banking regulations introduced after the 2008 crisis had caused problems because the stress tests applied to large institutions were not uniform.
“So these differential standards may have caused a migration of risky commercial real estate loans from larger, better-capitalised banks to weakly capitalised small and midsized banks.”
And, in a rather caustic comment, he added that, while the upsets of the past weeks had raised serious questions about the effectiveness of bank regulation and supervision, there was one area in response to the crisis that was highly effective.
“It has caused much traditional banking to migrate to the non-bank financial sector, including hedge funds, money market funds, pension funds and other institutions that are much less transparent than the regulated banking sector and thus capable of springing nasty systemic surprises.”
The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report issued last week drew out that there were entire areas of the system, dominated by non-bank financial institutions of which regulators had virtually no knowledge, including their level of debt and interconnectedness with the rest of the financial system.
Plender noted that the crisis in the British pension system last September, which “destabilised a market at the core of the British financial system,” and posed “devastating risk to financial stability,” had not been entirely unforeseen.
But the stress tests conducted by regulators on pensions did not allow for the extreme swings in the yields on long-term bonds, known as gilts, which took place.
An article by Rajan and Acharya, on which much of Plender’s analysis was based, published on Project Syndicate at the end of March, noted that while the collapse of SVB and Signature was caused by uninsured deposits “the problem may be more systemic.”
Together with co-authors, they had pointed to this problem in a paper presented to the conclave of central banks at Jackson Hole in August 2022. They noted that after the resumption of quantitative easing (QE)—the pumping of trillion of dollars by the Fed into the financial system after the start of the pandemic—the volume of uninsured deposits rose from about $5.5 trillion at the end of 2019 to over $8 trillion by the first quarter of 2022.
The authors explained that while many vulnerabilities were created by the bankers, the Fed also contributed to the problem.
“Periodic bouts of QE have expanded banks’ balance sheets and stuffed them with more uninsured deposits, making the banks increasingly dependent on easy liquidity. This dependency adds to the difficulty of reversing QE and tightening monetary policy.”
In an interview given in February, before the SVB crisis, William White, who was chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, warned of the consequences of the 2008 crisis and pointed to the dilemma confronting central banks.
On the one hand they are pushing up interest rates in the so-called fight against inflation—in reality a fight to suppress the wages upsurge of the working class in response to price hikes—while on the other hand they are fearful the rate rises can set off a collapse, he said.
“We have a more inflationary environment future coming, so real rates should rise, that means nominal rates should rise quite significantly and that one of the worries central banks have is that they could cause instability in the financial system.”
He noted the growing divorce between the value of financial assets and the underlying real economy, citing a McKinsey Global Institute study which showed that up until about 2000 broad measures of wealth tracked GDP or income.
“But since then, there’s been a huge discrepancy, with wealth rising must faster than GDP. But if production hasn’t gone up, while the wealth has, the conclusion you can come to is that it’s not really wealth. It was merely a rise in the prices measuring that wealth.”
While he did not make the point, the wealth to which he is referring is not that of the population as a whole but the assets, financial and otherwise, of the top echelons, the 1 percent and above. Many sections of the population have zero or negative wealth.
White noted that while major banks were well enough capitalised, “or maybe not,” it was a different story in the rest of the system. The past period had seen a “massive movement out of bank credit into credit extended elsewhere; non-bank financial institutions, leveraged loans, private debt, you name it. Non-bank financial institutions are now bigger than the regulated banks, and we don’t have the transparency and information to know what going on there in terms of systemic risks.”
It was put to him by the interviewer that he had always been something of a doomsayer, yet policy makers had found a way of muddling through. White responded that in his view at some point markets would start to question not only financial stability but the fiscal stability of governments.
“I think now, perhaps for the first time markets are becoming concerned about the sustainability of the fiscal finances of large, advanced countries.”
While granting this could be a rationalisation on his part, he continued: “All I do know is that each time you do have another crisis, it gets more difficult to crawl out of it. This whole kicking the can down the road thing, as the problem become more difficult, the solutions you have to offer become less effective.”
White concluded with a warning that policymakers “really have to get this right.”
“Because what if all of a sudden citizens become convinced that the government is not delivering on its promises? Where does that lead in democracy and faith in the system. The system screwed me, so screw you? These are dangerous things.”
In fact, as a result of the bitter experiences going back to the 2008 crisis and beyond, billions of people are already drawing the conclusions White fears.
The key question, as the capitalist system lurches into one crisis after another, with no policy except economic deprivation and war, is the arming of this growing movement with revolutionary socialist perspective which will be the subject of the April 30 worldwide rally organised by the International Committee of the Fourth International to celebrate May Day.
JOE BIDEN: LYING SOCIOPATH GAMER PARASITE LAWYER!
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. JOHN BINDER
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
Moody’s Chief Economist: Customers Will Ultimately Pay to Save SVB, Signature Bank Depositors On Monday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi stated that ultimately, “we all bear the cost” of backstopping the depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank because banks will pass part of the cost on to consumers, but he thinks the backstopping was the least bad decision.
Zandi said, “In terms of who pays, most directly, it’s the banks themselves. Because the FDIC — who is coming in to resolve these failed institutions and pay off depositors and other creditors — pulls that money out of the Deposit Insurance Fund, the fund that’s been established where banks contribute into that for this very purpose, to pay for failed institutions. But clearly, the banks will then try to pass at least some of that along to their customers. So, they’ll eat some of it in the form of less earnings, lower profits, it probably affects the pay of their executives and other employees. But, ultimately, it likely also ends up in lower deposit rates for depositors and higher lending costs for lenders. So, ultimately, the cost is borne broadly by the customers of the banking system, which is most of us.”
He continued, “Now, having said that, the calculation you have to do here is, if the FDIC didn’t step in and resolve those institutions and if the government hadn’t provided those — that kind of strong backstop, what was the counterfactual then? What would have happened? And it felt really — a couple of weeks ago, it felt pretty uncomfortable. It felt like the banking system could come under extreme pressure, we could have deposit runs and then, ultimately, the cost to all of us would be even greater, because the government would have had to step in, provide more support, there would be more failures, and the cost to us would be even greater. So, it’s kind of a no good choice here…I think policymakers made the least bad choice that they had. But ultimately, we all bear the cost of that as customers of the bank.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
One can make a good argument that banking is part of global economic problems. The system allows banks to get bigger and bigger, with profits going, not to people who create, but to those who despoil. This is no longer a case of lenders driving capitalism. Instead, it is a closed system that works with the government to police people and entices them into bad financial decisions (think of the 2008 collapse over equity-free housing loans). It promotes spending much of our productivity, national and personal, on banking services.
Dem Rep. Gottheimer: We Still Don’t Know What Regulators Did During SVB Collapse 1:52
On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) stated that we still don’t know what regulators did over the weekend that Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.
Co-host Tyler Mathisen asked, “Chairman McHenry was incensed, I guess is a possible way of putting it, over what he described as a lack of transparency over the weekend when SVB was engineered out of existence. He says there are no notes publicly available from the regulators’ emergency meetings over the weekend, and that lack of transparency has a negative effect on the public view of the safety of the financial arena. How do you feel about that? Was there — is there enough transparency about what was going on on that weekend when regulators finally stepped in?”
Gottheimer answered, “Not yet. Which is why I and others have called for an investigation. It starts with this hearing, but it’s got to go a lot deeper. There [were] a lot of question marks. We were all talking over that weekend, and I spoke to the chairman, I spoke to the ranking member, I spoke to a lot of banks, small or medium regional-sized regional banks. We’re all having — and investors and consumers and many non-profits, and we were all having the same discussion of what — they were all panicked, what’s going on. Because it was quiet for a long period, as you know, over that weekend, and a lot of money left small or medium regional banks over the weekend, as we have seen in the numbers. That’s a problem. We should understand why we didn’t have better information, especially those of us on the committee. And we’re going to want to have answers, which is why we’re doing this in-depth investigation.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
BLOG EDITOR: BLACKROCK IS BIDEN'S BIGGEST BRIBESTER. THEY OPERATE OUT OF THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE UNDER GAMER LAWYER BRIAN DEESE.
Currently, the world is run by moneymen. You only have to look at the way Vanguard and BlackRock own everything between the two of them, even as they use our money to drive those companies into socially destructive and economically wasteful ESG policies (e.g., green energy, DEI, CRT, trans ideology, etc.). (And no, this Reuters article does not debunk the charge, because it ignores the fact that the companies are driven more by ESG policies than by working for their investors. ESG is a huge breach of fiduciary duty.
Australia shows the devastating power that modern banks have over people’s lives
Most Americans cling to the old-fashioned notion that a bank honorably holds their money and pays interest on that money, with the interest coming from the fact that the bank loans that same money to others for an even higher interest rate. We all imagine Jimmy Stewart explaining how banks work to his Bedford Falls neighbors in It’s a Wonderful Life . That’s not true anymore and, Australia’s experience illustrates that, in the 21st century, banks have almost unlimited control over people’s lives.
My parents were loyal to Australia’s Commonwealth Bank way beyond what was logical. It took a lot of evidence from the bank’s own actions for them even to consider changing banks, and even then, it was emotionally painful for them. The reality is that banks have been appalling for a very long time, and their pathology has been progressing exponentially lately, as they no longer try to hide their craven intent.
Here in Australia, for a $10.00 “overdraft” that exists for less than 24 hours, banks charge $25.00. They call this a “fee” because, if they acknowledged that it’s an interest charge, that rate per annum would be over 90,000%!
Image: Banking by rawpixel .
Banks block our accounts for any number of reasons. My favorite is because a government bureaucracy decides the accountholder transgressed. As we all know, in the world of bureaucracy, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Getting access to the account again is an uphill battle. You must spend time and money proving that the money you earned and that you put into the bank for safekeeping is, in fact, your property. The costs associated with that proof are yours alone to keep you in your place—and the interest during that time is the bank’s bonus.
Banks devise “products” that promise to pay you interest at a rate that is competitively commercial but build into it certain hoops that you must jump through to achieve that commercial interest rate. They call the hoops a service to help you—to save you time and to focus your energies—but the reality is that they use the fine print to reduce the commercial interest to a theft rate and laugh each month that you fail to comply with the minutiae of their scam.
Banks offer loans that transfer your hard-earned income to their palatial corporate headquarters, where they promote fiscal irresponsibility by lending higher and higher proportions of property value, and they pitch interest rates to reflect risk, even as they assure that they never take a risk. All costs are passed on to the client so that a loan of one million dollars may cost three million by the time the bank forecloses—and it will magically force foreclosure just as the property price and legal fees hit three million dollars. Inflation drives property value increases, and banks help drive that inflation.
One can make a good argument that banking is part of global economic problems. The system allows banks to get bigger and bigger, with profits going, not to people who create, but to those who despoil. This is no longer a case of lenders driving capitalism. Instead, it is a closed system that works with the government to police people and entices them into bad financial decisions (think of the 2008 collapse over equity-free housing loans). It promotes spending much of our productivity, national and personal, on banking services.
Currently, the world is run by moneymen. You only have to look at the way Vanguard and BlackRock own everything between the two of them, even as they use our money to drive those companies into socially destructive and economically wasteful ESG policies (e.g., green energy, DEI, CRT, trans ideology, etc.). (And no, this Reuters article does not debunk the charge, because it ignores the fact that the companies are driven more by ESG policies than by working for their investors. ESG is a huge breach of fiduciary duty.
What the new system means is that we have lost control. We are all working to pay interest on debt that we didn’t need in the first place. Debt investment has created Big Tech, Ukraine, and so much more—unaffordable fads swirling around so-called climate change, unaffordable social programs based on fact-averse policies, all leading to what I’ve heard is 300 trillion in global debt this year (which I suspect underestimates the scope of the problem).
I have a very simple understanding of finance, and probably no understanding of global finance. As I see it, the world works if individuals are in charge of production, innovation, and entrepreneurship, with enterprises functioning at a human level.
The mess we are in is no longer human scale. It is no longer controllable, and to continue to pretend that it is requires short-sighted stupidity at a level no one thought possible two years ago. When we lose human scale, we lose humanity. I’d like to point the finger of blame at a specific person, party, or institution but, basically, it is us. We let it happen.
Nodrog is a pseudonym because Australia is no longer a free country.
Report: 44% of Americans Work a Second Job, 13% Increase Under Biden Summers: We’ll Either Have ‘Substantially Unsustainable Inflation’ or ‘Fairly Hard’ Downturn Due to Bank Issues VIDEO
1:30
During an interview aired on Friday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Harvard Professor, economist, Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton Larry Summers stated that “we are still a substantially unsustainable inflation country unless the economy turns down fairly hard” due to issues in the banking system.
Summers said that while the most recent PCE numbers are better than previous numbers, “I don’t think one should make too much of that. I think we are still a substantially unsustainable inflation country unless the economy turns down fairly hard in response to the credit issues raised by the banking system, and we don’t know yet whether that’s going to happen.”
He added, “So, in a sense, the outcomes here are a bit bifurcated. Either the banking crisis will pass without incident and without large impact on credit, in which case we really do have serious inflation issues and the Fed will have to tighten much more than is priced in, or we’re going to see some kind of real downturn here. And I think both are plausible outcomes and I recognize that there’s a chance we’ll skate through right in between, but I have to say that seems very much odds off to me. Soft landings are very hard, even in the best environment.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
A devastating car market crash is now in motion, and it will trigger brutal consequences for buyers, sellers, and dealers. The U.S. auto market entered 2023 in a massive bubble, with average new car prices hitting an absolute record high while used car prices were almost 42% higher compared to 2019 levels. But now several factors are contributing to a collapse in the value of cars. At the same time, auto loan debt levels are shooting up and even borrowers with good credit scores are becoming unable to afford car payments and having their vehicles repossessed. A famous industry executive said this could lead the country to the next great financial crisis, and considering the pace at which this downturn is unfolding, it looks like his warning is spot on.
In February 2023, the average cost of a new car climbed to $50,000 in the United States, up from just $38,948 in December 2019. That marked the highest price for a new car in history, according to data compiled by Edmunds. At the same time, a growing number of consumers are having to stretch their budgets to afford a new vehicle. The average monthly payment for a new car is up 26% since 2019 to $718 a month, and nearly one in six new car buyers is spending more than $1,000 a month on vehicles, also a record. Other costs associated with owning a car have also shot up, including insurance, gas, and repairs. "With new car prices as high as they are, it's getting more and more difficult for most Americans to stomach these payments," stresses Ivan Drury, Edmunds director of insights.
After the pandemic broke out, automakers expected car demand to collapse, which led them to reduce output, and microchip manufacturers followed suit. With a shortage of new cars hitting the market in 2020, consumers started to use their stimulus checks and took advantage of low-interest rates to purchase used cars instead, driving up prices four times faster than the growth seen in the inventory of new cars. “The perfect storm of supply and demand created a temporary and unsustainable spike in used car prices, says Motley Fool’s analyst Sean Williams. A huge bubble was formed, but a reckoning has just arrived.
The repercussions of the car market collapse can throw the entire country in disarray. We must consider that the U.S. car industry is a significant contributor to the country's economy, accounting for millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue. A crash in this market can result in a significant economic downturn, leading to widespread job losses, bankruptcies, and a sharp decline in consumer spending. It can also disrupt the supply chain for many other industries. Given that car manufacturers rely on a vast network of suppliers to produce their vehicles, when the crash finally occurs, it will trigger a domino effect on these suppliers, leading to mass disruption in many sectors. When Musk says this could turn into a financial nightmare, he isn't bluffing. We should all pay very close attention to the next developments of this crisis because it will ultimately impact all of us. That’s why in today’s video, we compiled several facts that prove that the U.S. auto market is in huge trouble.
Consumer Sentiment Cracks: First Drop in Four Months Getty Images/praetorianphoto 1:48
Consumer sentiment unexpectedly worsened in March as worries over a looming recession took hold.
The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment fell to 62.0 in March from 67 in February, an eight percent decline. Compared with a year ago, the index is down four percent.
The midmonth preliminary reading came in at 63.4, so the final number indicates that sentiment continued to deteriorate as March progressed. Economists had expected the final March reading to more or less hold steady with the mid-month score.
Surprisingly, it was not the banking crisis that depressed consumer sentiment.
“This month’s turmoil in the banking sector had limited impact on consumer sentiment, which was already exhibiting downward momentum prior to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Overall, our data revealed multiple signs that consumers increasingly expect a recession ahead,” said Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey.
There were steep declines in both the assessment of current conditions and expectations for the future.
“While sentiment fell across all demographic groups, the declines were sharpest for lower-income, less-educated, and younger consumers, as well as consumers with the top tercile of stock holdings. All five index components declined this month, led by a notably sharp weakening in one-year business conditions,” Hsu said.
Year-ahead inflation expectations fell from 4.1 percent in February to 3.6 percent, the lowest reading since April 2021. Long-run inflation expectations came in at 2.9 percent for the fourth consecutive month.
A large number of Walmart stores are set to close down permanently next month as conditions continue to deteriorate for U.S. grocers. The biggest retailer in the world hasn’t been immune from the devastating effects of the retail apocalypse, and now several locations that have served their communities for years are about to disappear. Believe it or not, the top retail chain is reporting lagging sales growth and a myriad of challenges that include wage and consumer inflation and declining demand. The outlook is very grim, and many other big U.S. grocery chains are following Walmart’s move and shuttering multiple locations to survive the perfect storm that has already begun.
According to The U.S. Sun, over a hundred locations are on the chopping block due to “poor sales performance”. On top of that, the retail giant has decided to put an end to its nine-year experiment with pick-up-only locations and confirmed it would lay off thousands of workers at its e-commerce fulfillment centers across the country.Moreover, in a recent interview with Fox News, the former Walmart CEO pointed to several reasons why the company was struggling and warned Americans about the “detrimental impact that mass layoffs could have on the U.S.'s feeble economy.”
"It's crazy right now. We're stuck in this loop of wage inflation, product inflation, and cost inflation. And it's just that cycle keeps going. And I think, unfortunately, an inevitable byproduct of some of the Fed's moves during the pandemic,” said Bill Simon, who left his position as Walmart’s chief executive officer in 2014. Walmart has already informed investors that it expects sales growth to significantly slow down, especially in the second half of this year. On Tuesday, Walmart forecasted net sales growth of 2.5% for the current fiscal year, well below Wall Street’s prediction for a 3.3% increase. It expects adjusted earnings in a range between $5.90 per share for 2024, missing analysts’ forecast of $6.50.
Refinitiv data shows that this would mark the weakest sales growth for the retailer since its 2010 fiscal year, and the first drop in annual earnings since fiscal 2009. But Walmart is far from the only large retailer that is facing closure as sales decline. As a perfect storm of events hits food supply chains, several grocery stores nationwide are also shutting down. A new report by Best Life reveals that dozens of Winn-Dixie stores are closing right now. A spokesperson for Southeastern Grocers Inc., Winn-Dixie's parent company, called the decision to close "difficult." "While we understand that closing stores will impact local communities, we want to assure you this decision was not made lightly," the spokesperson said.
Moreover, so far this year 6 Lucky supermarkets have been shuttered. And another one is on the chopping block this month after 40 years in business. In February, Green Zebra, a grocery chain that earned the love of loyal customers all across Portland, Oregon went bankrupt. The niche grocery market was known for its healthier meals, but unfortunately, the chain went under and is now closing all of its current locations. The goodbye occurs after 10 years in business.
The shutdown of so many stores is not only affecting the bottom lines of businesses but also leading to a surge in unemployment and higher prices, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to afford the basic necessities of life. Local communities are also feeling the impact, as empty storefronts and vacant malls have become the new norm. We must wake up to the fact that the retail apocalypse is not just a temporary setback but a long-term crisis that requires immediate action.
A CLOSE LOOK AT BIDENOMICS
CALIFORNIA HAS THE MOST ILLEGALS IN THE COUNTRY AND THE MOST HOMELESS. NOT HARD TO DO THE MATH ON THAT ONE.
VIDEOS
A decent, safe, and affordable home is something all Americans need to thrive. For decades, low-income families have struggled to have access to affordable rental homes, but now this is a huge problem for the middle class, too. Millions of middle-income earners can’t afford rent in major U.S. cities due to the steep rise in prices recorded since the pandemic. Without significant pay raises or government assistance, these middle-class households are being shut out from typical middle-class neighborhoods, and this is triggering a chain reaction that leads to systemic poverty and lingering inequality. In other words, housing costs are squeezing the life out of middle-class Americans.
The typical home now costs about $80,000 more than it did just two years ago, and the average rent in the U.S. is over $1,000 more expensive than in 2020. Rents are climbing an average of 3.5% annually, the study found, while middle-class renters’ incomes have declined 9% over the past decade. In most metropolitan areas across the country, the American middle class has been spending far more on housing than they can afford, researchers found. The study highlights that 21.2% of middle-class homeowners and 46.3% of middle-class renters in the United States are either moderately or severely burdened by housing costs — defined as spending more than 30% or more than 50% of their income on housing, respectively.
"Ultimately, we're in a rental affordability crisis," noted Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a research associate with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Believe it or not, 15 years ago, more than two-thirds of people who rented an apartment or a single-family home in the U.S. earned less than $30,000 a year, the study shows.
Every year that passes by, it gets even harder for middle-class renters who cannot qualify for subsidized housing to find affordable apartments on the market. Renters need to earn $21.21 an hour to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment in the U.S., according to the National Low Income Housing Council, significantly more than the average national hourly wage of $16.38. This is why 51% of renters in the middle class are unable to afford a place to live in most U.S. cities.
The savings that used to be associated with the middle class have dried up in the past few years, as wage growth stagnated. Not only does this make it harder for people to stay in the middle class, but it makes coming up with high sums to rent or buy city apartments impossible. “If there aren’t enough cheaper options, it becomes a chain, with a middle-class person living in an apartment a lower-income person might have occupied, and so on,” Apartment List Senior Research Associate Sydney Bennet said. “If you miss that gap in the middle for housing, it has a chain reaction.”
And the aftermath of that is systemic poverty and an increasingly unequal America, where only those at the very top of the economic chain can own their homes and build equity through properties while the middle class is hollowed out. This isn’t only a housing and rental crisis, this is the reflection of the crumbling foundations of a broken society. And nothing that our leaders are doing is making things any better. The financial meltdown that we’re witnessing today is a reminder that more distress is coming for everyday Americans. And sadly, it looks like real estate will be the next domino to fall.
Report: 62% of American Consumers Live Paycheck to Paycheck Getty 2:17
A report revealed 62 percent of United States adults live paycheck to paycheck.
A report by PYMNTS and LendingClub, a peer-to-peer lending platform, revealed that as of February, 62 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, including 48 percent of high-income consumers.
The report noted that though inflation is lower than it was in July, consumers are still contending with rising costs.
“Inflation has made life more and more expensive, and consumers have already made moves to cope, such as pulling back on discretionary expenses,” the report read. “But one can only pull back so far on spending, and PYMNTS’ data reveals that consumers are finding another way to navigate their lower purchasing power.”
The report observed that for some people “supplemental income may be the key” and noted that about a quarter of consumers had a side job in addition to 17 percent who had other forms of supplemental income.
The report noted 39 percent of those who lived paycheck to paycheck “with issues paying their bills” mentioned “extraordinary expenses” as their reason for seeking side work.
Some 55% percent of respondents reported their supplemental income grew as a share of their total income over the last 90 days.
The report surveyed 4,125 U.S. consumers from Feb. 7 to Feb. 23 and also considered economic data from other sources.
A February press release from LendingClub indicated that in January 60 percent of consumers were living paycheck to paycheck, two percent lower than in February.
The press release also touched on data about outstanding credit card balances, with the average consumer having credit card debt totaling 35 percent of their savings.
However, this figure varied among different consumer groups. Those who indicated they were living paycheck to paycheck without issues paying their bills maintained credit card balances equaling 62 percent of their savings, and those who were living paycheck to paycheck and had trouble paying their bills had credit card debt exceeding their available savings by more than 50 percent.
Report: 44% of Americans Work a Second Job, 13% Increase Under Biden AP Photo/Brennan Linsley 2:11
Forty-four percent of Americans work a second job, a 13 percent increase relative to the Trump administration, a LendingClub report revealed Tuesday.
The recent increase under President Joe Biden is highlighted by a survey from FlexJobs, which found 69 percent of employed professionals either have a side job or want one.
The desire to work longer hours at a second job comes as Biden’s 40-year-high inflation cost American households an extra $5,200 in 2022 or $433 per month on average, according to Bloomberg.
While many Americans are forced to expand their income by working more hours at a second job, Biden is expanding taxes on the so-called gig economy.
As Breitbart News noted in November, the IRS warned workers that they will be forced to report income over $600 to the IRS on a form called the 1099-K. The warning was a result of Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
The rule is intended to compel American workers to “pay your fair share,” an idea that Biden has pushed for the wealthy but not average Americans — until now.
The LendingClub report also revealed 62 percent of Americans, including 48 percent of high-income consumers, were living paycheck to paycheck in February, up two percentage points from the month prior.
Breitbart News’s Michael Foster reported :
The report noted 39 percent of those who lived paycheck to paycheck “with issues paying their bills” mentioned “extraordinary expenses” as their reason for seeking side work.
Some 55% percent of respondents reported their supplemental income grew as a share of their total income over the last 90 days.
The report polled 4,125 U.S. consumers from February 7 – 23 and considered economic data from other sources as well.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality .
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors David McNew/Getty Images 2:43
Several Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) board of directors have donated thousands of dollars or have direct ties to prominent Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Summers: Taxpayers Will Bear ‘Stunningly’ High Cost of Resolving SVB, Signature Bank
During an interview aired on Friday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Harvard Professor, economist, Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton Larry Summers stated that the amount the FDIC spent on bank resolutions is “stunningly” high and that taxpayers will ultimately bear the cost.
Summers stated, “I’m surprised by how much the FDIC has had to spend on these resolutions relative to the things that were being said earlier. They were hoping to sell SVB as a whole entity and then, in order to get somebody to buy it, they had to chip in a set of stuff that was cumulatively worth $20 billion. The arithmetic is similar relative to the scale of the bank at Signature Bank. There are a lot of questions about those transactions. I’m still confused about why the holding company debt of SVB is still being valued in a meaningful way. And I will want to see assurance that no executive there is getting deferred compensation. But these were stunningly expensive transactions. Ultimately, everybody’s going to say, it’s not coming back to taxpayers, but banks are taxpayers on behalf of people, their depositors, their customers, their people they lend to. And the $23 billion the FDIC has spent is $100 per adult American and that’s a fair amount. So, I wonder if we can’t be looking at the procedures that they’re using and finding ways to do better.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Schweizer: It’s what you call an incestuous relationship between government and business. On the latest episode of the Drill Down podcast , Government Accountability Institute President and New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer and GAI Vice President Eric Eggers tackle the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank – and reveal California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s personal interest in the bank’s bailout.
“This was ‘the elite’ —this was the ‘Silicon Valley elite,’ Schweizer says of the SVB depositors, adding that much of SVB’s cash was invested in Environmental Social Governance initiatives which, in many cases, didn’t even make a product.
Dem Rep. Gottheimer: We Still Don’t Know What Regulators Did During SVB Collapse 1:52
On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) stated that we still don’t know what regulators did over the weekend that Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.
Co-host Tyler Mathisen asked, “Chairman McHenry was incensed, I guess is a possible way of putting it, over what he described as a lack of transparency over the weekend when SVB was engineered out of existence. He says there are no notes publicly available from the regulators’ emergency meetings over the weekend, and that lack of transparency has a negative effect on the public view of the safety of the financial arena. How do you feel about that? Was there — is there enough transparency about what was going on on that weekend when regulators finally stepped in?”
Gottheimer answered, “Not yet. Which is why I and others have called for an investigation. It starts with this hearing, but it’s got to go a lot deeper. There [were] a lot of question marks. We were all talking over that weekend, and I spoke to the chairman, I spoke to the ranking member, I spoke to a lot of banks, small or medium regional-sized regional banks. We’re all having — and investors and consumers and many non-profits, and we were all having the same discussion of what — they were all panicked, what’s going on. Because it was quiet for a long period, as you know, over that weekend, and a lot of money left small or medium regional banks over the weekend, as we have seen in the numbers. That’s a problem. We should understand why we didn’t have better information, especially those of us on the committee. And we’re going to want to have answers, which is why we’re doing this in-depth investigation.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
'CREDIT CARD' JOE BIDEN PUT YELLEN IN TREASURY BECAUSE SHE HAS SUCKED ABOUT $8MILLION IN BANKSTER SPEECH FEE BRIBES AND WOULD PROTECT THE BIDEN'S NEARLY 150 DIRTY ILLEGAL TAX EVADING MOREY WIRE TRANSFERS FROM FOREIGN DICATORS AND CRIMINALS.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will say on Thursday that regulators may have to tighten banking rules in the wake of the banking crisis.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) obtained prepared remarks Yellen will deliver at the National Association for Business Economics, which will present her with an award in memory of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, who was famous for cracking down on inflation. Yellen served as a Federal Reserve chair and other top posts at the nation’s central bank.
Yellen will use her remarks to implement more banking regulations that began in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“These events remind us of the urgent need to complete unfinished business: to finalize post-crisis reforms, consider whether deregulation may have gone too far, and repair the cracks in the regulatory perimeter that the recent shocks have revealed,” Yellen will say.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen speaks during a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill March 29, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
The Journal noted some former regulators have said that D.C. regulators have been too focused on America’s largest banks after the 2008 financial crisis, potentially ignoring possible issues with small and medium-sized banks. In 2018, under then-President Donald Trump, Congress passed a bill to roll back regulations that were viewed as too onerous for community banks.
The Fed is now reconsidering rules for medium-sized banks, or those with assets between $100 and $250 billion. The Biden White House will likely issue recommendations for rules to increase scrutiny over medium-sized banks.
“Regulatory requirements have been loosened in recent years. I believe it is appropriate to assess the impact of these deregulatory decisions and take any necessary actions in response,” Yellen will say.
“In large part, this was due to the post-crisis reforms we put in place. But in both cases, the government had to deliver substantial interventions to ease the pressure on certain parts of the financial system. This means that more work must be done,” she will say.
Yellen said the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), an interagency group created under Dodd-Frank reforms, will change its rules to subject institutions such as money-market funds to more supervision.
Yellen will argue that money-market funds, hedge funds, and stablecoins, or digital assets pegged to the value of a fiat currency such as the United States dollar, could present instability risks.
“The financial stability risks posed by money market and open-end funds have not been sufficiently addressed,” she will remark.
Yellen’s remarks will also call on Congress to pass legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers more like banks.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3 .
Poll: Growing Numbers of Voters Believe Joe, Hunter Biden Did Something Illegal or Unethical ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images 3:07
More voters over the course of four month period are convinced Hunter and President Joe Biden have done something illegal or unethical in relation to his family’s business, a Fox News poll found Wednesday.
The increase comes after the House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed in March the Biden family received a collective $1.3 million cut in 2017 from a Biden family business associate, who was sent a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese energy company linked to the CCP.
The committee has also discovered unreported funds the Biden family businesses received while Joe Biden was vice president. Overall, the Biden family business has received more than 31 million during his reign as vice president.
Hunter has confirmed the $1.3 million China payout, while Joe Biden falsely denied it.
According to the poll, 64 percent believe Joe Biden did something illegal or unethical, the poll found in March. That number is greater than the poll’s findings in December when 62 percent said the president had done something illegal or unethical in connection with the Biden family business.
Polling data shows the increase of two percent was transferred from those who were recorded as unsure in December. Seven percent in December did not know if Joe Biden did something illegal or unethical. In March, that number shrank two percentage points to five percent.
The number of voters who believe Biden has done nothing wrong has remained constant. Only 31 percent in March said Joe Biden “hasn’t done anything seriously wrong,” mirroring the same number from December’s poll.
The growing belief that Joe Biden has done something wrong is tracing Hunter Biden’s polling data on the same question. Seventy-six percent say Hunter did something illegal or unethical, up from 73 percent in February and 70 percent in December.
Those who did not know if Hunter did something illegal or unethical has also shrunk over four months: 11 percent in March, 9 percent in February, 6 percent in December.
By convincing the undecideds, the polling data suggests Comer is winning the public relations battle against the White House, which has often refused to engage with the media.
Speaking with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Comer vowed to keep investigating the Biden family for nine violations to determine if Joe Biden is compromised by China for legislative purposes.
“We believe the reason the family was receiving this money is because of favors that Joe Biden did as vice president and or as president,” Comer said.
He added the trove of bank documents that revealed the $1.3 million China payout to the Biden family is one set of many more to be disclosed to the public in the coming months:
The poll surveyed 1,007 registered voters from March 24-27 with a 3 point margin of error.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality .
DON'T WORRY BANKSTERS. THEY'RE NEVER GOING TO TAKE BACK SOME OF THE MONEY YOU'VE STOLEN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI2ngfB9f5s
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are leading a bipartisan group of senators in introducing legislation that would allow federal regulators to take back “all or part of” the compensation bank executives received in the five years preceding the event of another bank failure.
In the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse, the bipartisan legislation, Failed Bank Executives Clawback Act, would ultimately require federal regulators — in the event of bank failures, to take back the compensation bank executives received in the five years preceding the failure.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks during a Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight on Capitol Hill August 3, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
While the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) ability to “claw back” compensation from bank executives in case of a bank failure is limited, bipartisan legislation would give regulators the tools they need to hold executives of failed banks responsible. The legislation would:
Require the FDIC to claw back from bank executives all or part of the compensation they have received over the five-year period preceding a bank’s insolvency or FDIC-resolution as is necessary to prevent unjust enrichment. Extend claw back authorities established by Section 204(a)(3) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to apply to any bank entered into FDIC receivership, not only those resolved under the FDIC’s Orderly Liquidation Authority. Ensure that, should an insured depository institution affiliated with a bank holding company fail, investors in that holding company should bear the losses of the insured depository institution. “Bank executives who make risky investments with customers’ money shouldn’t be permitted to profit in the good times, and then avoid financial consequences when things go south,” said Hawley in a statement. “This legislation puts the executives’ own profits on the line, and that’s exactly as it should be.”
Warren, explaining that President Joe Biden wanted Congress to pass legislation to hold bank CEOs responsible, also noted that this gives “the financial cops … additional authority to clawback lavish pay and bonuses when executives explode their bank.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questions Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on March 7, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Americans are sick and tired of fat cat bankers paying themselves handsomely while risking other people’s hard-earned money,” Warren added. “It’s time for Congress to step up and strengthen the law so bank executives bear the cost of failure, not line their pockets and walk away scot-free.”
n addition to Hawley and Warren, the legislation is already supported by Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI2ngfB9f5s
HOW MANY ECONOMIC WAVES OF BANKSTER PLUNDER WILL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE PUT UP WITH???
ABOUT EVERY TEN TO TWEENTY YEARS THE BANKSTERS WIPE US OUT AND THEN PUT IT IN THEIR PCOEKETS ALONG WITH A FEW BANKSTER-OWNED POLS!
In every crisis, the two main classes of society align themselves and more and more directly on their fundamental material interests. The program of the ruling class will develop accordingly: rescue operations for the financial oligarchy combined with war and social counterrevolution.
Major Banking Crisis Looms as Study Finds Nearly 200 More Banks Could Potentially Collapse NOAH BERGER/AFP via Getty Images 3:42
The following content is sponsored by Monetary Gold , the official gold sponsor of Breitbart News.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, followed by Signature Bank two days later, turned out to be the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. That is no small feat.
A recently published study by the Social Science Research Network found that 186 banks across the United States could collapse if half of their respective uninsured depositors were to withdraw their funds. Meaning you, an American citizen, walk into your bank and ask for what is rightfully yours. That simple act could collapse 186 banks with potentially $300 billion in insured deposits at risk.
The SSRN Study also evaluated banks’ asset books around the United States, and they found that there is an estimated $2 trillion discrepancy in their overall market value. They also said that uninsured depositors are a major source of funding for commercial banks and account for about $9 trillion of bank liabilities. So, if we, the people, were to ask for our money back, these banks could present a “significant risk” of collapsing the banking system.
Do you see 2008 again on the horizon? What’s different now? The bank collapse of 2023-2024 is but a mile away, and we can see it coming. In 2008, we were surprised, but now we are witnessing the same 2008 signals. Today, each one of us can still do something about protecting ourselves .
The banking system is made up of 100 percent paper assets. Money, stocks, bonds, mortgages, contracts, futures, etc. All paper. Just like during the Great Depression, we could all wake up one day to find our paper asset values cut in half—or worthless. With $31 trillion of debt, could that happen again?
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Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention preventing the loss of your savings will save you countless sleepless nights when the financial system begins crumbling from debt.
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Peter Schweizer ‘Drills Down’ on How Bank Bailouts Rescue Clueless Silicon Valley Elites VIDEO
Schweizer: It’s what you call an incestuous relationship between government and business.
On the latest episode of the Drill Down podcast , Government Accountability Institute President and New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer and GAI Vice President Eric Eggers tackle the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank – and reveal California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s personal interest in the bank’s bailout.
“This was ‘the elite’ —this was the ‘Silicon Valley elite,’ Schweizer says of the SVB depositors, adding that much of SVB’s cash was invested in Environmental Social Governance initiatives which, in many cases, didn’t even make a product.
“Maybe people are right to be worried,” Eggers says of SVB’s demise.
On the other hand, Eggers stresses that if some of the cutting-edge tech companies doing business with the bank were allowed to fail, China could swoop in and buy everything “on the cheap,” putting America in a potentially compromised, weakened position.
“I think we should restrict China from buying up any of these companies,” Schweizer confirms adamantly.
“[ESG] businesses generally don’t make money,” Schweizer says, adding that SVB got caught with its pants down with too much money in too many green businesses.
Schweizer and Eggers expose California Governor Gavin Newsom’s personal interest in bailing out Silicon Valley Bank, including Newsom’s business connections to SVB and his shakedown for his wife’s charity. At Newsom’s request, the bank donated $100,000 to his wife’s charity, the California Partners Project, and later advocated the bank’s bailout. “It’s what you call an incestuous relationship between government and business,” Schweizer says.
To listen to the Drill Down Podcast – click here .
Police State: IRS pays a visit to Matt Taibbi on same day he testifies before Congress on government abuses
What is anyone supposed to think of this?
According to the New York Post :
An IRS agent stopped by the home of Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi the same day of his congressional testimony on the weaponization of the government, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who’s demanding an explanation over the oddly timed visit.
Jordan sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and the Department of Treasury on Monday in hopes of getting to the bottom of why the federal agent appeared at Taibbi’s New Jersey home on March 9 and left a note, according to an editorial in The Wall Street Journal that cited the letter.
The note reportedly instructed Taibbi to call the IRS four days later.
When he did, an agent told him his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had both been rejected due to identity theft concerns.
A home visit? No mail, no phone calls? The IRS does home visits all right, but only after cases are pretty well advanced and developed, and are quite likely is to lead to a monetary haul for the agency. Manpower is costly. This was about expended manpower for the weird and trivial task of asking Taibbi to call them in four days, something they could have sent him a letter for, or even more logically, just called him themselves. So yes, this visit looks pretty odd.
This was supposedly about identity theft concerns dating from his 2018 and 2021 tax returns, as if such "concerns" would merit a home visit, which is also odd, because they accepted Taibbi's 2018 tax return with no problem in that year, and apparently his 2021 return after some trouble filing electronically. Taibbi said it wasn't about his owing the IRS money -- he said they actually owed him money.
So what is this about? It's passing strange that his tax returns were reopened after they had already been accepted. What prompted someone to go look at his tax returns in the 'accepted' file a second time?
Most likely, the sudden surge of IRS activity had something to do with Taibbi's appearance at the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by Jordan himself, revealing government-private sector collusion at Twitter which involved censoring Americans' tweets, something Taibbi called the "Censorship Industrial Complex."
It seems to have angered someone in the government, given that Taibbi's research exposed abuses of government power. That's Taibbi's job, to check abuses of power through the power of the First Amendment as a member of the Fourth Estate, but no matter.
Ordinarily, the government should accept this, because all the government would have to do is correct their overextended course in the wake of Taibbi's reporting, and they could go on their merry way. But someone didn't like that prospect; some kind of ideology coupled with power was there and they seem to have retaliated with intimidation tactics on flimsy made-up charge against Taibbi.
This is how police states work. Oh, sure, they will say it's just a coincidence that they sent an agent to Taibbi's home, but they'll have to explain themselves better than that. They've already gotten away with Lois Lerner and her shady tactics against Tea Party groups, they must have more agents just like her in that agency, willing to act on ideological motives to silence government critics.
Who are they taking orders from? In the Lerner case, it was likely the White House.
And why do they think they can get away with this, against an opposition-led Congress, no less?
Is this what Joe Biden's $80 billion monster funding of the IRS has brought us? Is this what it was about? If I recall correctly, John Hinderaker at Power Line speculated that newly beefed up IRS, far from targeting billionaires as Biden promoted to win the bill's congressional passage, would use the new cash infusion to target conservatives and other inconvenient people.
Looks like they did, and Hinderaker was right on the money.
It's amazing chutzpah that threatens free speech and every government critic in America. It's now a new case for the House subcomittee on the weaponization of government to put on its docket, and fortunately, Jordan is acting with urgency , sending letters to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (who's desperate to keep her job), and IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel, (a brand new IRS commissioner appointed on March 9 who's certainly started out his new term with a bang), to explain themselves.
Both are particularly vulnerable as pawns of the Biden administration as they both have ample reason to be eager to please their boss -- Yellen because of her blunders on banks and inflation, and Werfel because he is a newbie -- meaning, we can't be surprised if the trail might just lead to the White House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRlWbKOEGXo
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors BERNIE SANDERS: The bank who begged for deregulation is the same one who begged for a bailout.
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder
told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the
national economy.” AS THEY LOOTED TRILLIONS FROM
THE ECONOMY AND THEN PASSED ALONG SOME OF THE
LOOT IN THE FORM OF 'SPEECH FEE' BRIBES!
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
The Republican staff of the US House Committee on Financial Services released a report Monday presenting its findings on why the Obama Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder chose not to prosecute the British-based HSBC bank for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
As for the release of Democratic Party emails, even if one accepts the unsubstantiated claim that it was Russian operatives who turned them over to WikiLeaks, what the emails revealed were true facts about the operations of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—facts that the electorate had every right to know. Among the documents released were Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, for which she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other leaked emails exposed the corrupt efforts of the DNC to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders.
HA, HA, HA! YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT FROM THE RACIST WATERS?
AP Photo/Evan Vucci 2:55
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said she plans to give back the campaign donations she received from the political action committee for Silicon Valley Bank.
Waters: Raising Interest Rates ‘Has Not Been Working’ and May Cause a Recession, But It’s ‘All that We Have’ to Fight Inflation 1:46
On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Velshi,” House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) stated that raising interest rates to lower inflation “has not been working in the way that it should.” And “it doesn’t look good right now. We may be in for a recession.” But interest rate hikes are “all that we have as a traditional way of containing inflation” and “We don’t have” an answer to lower inflation.
Waters said, “[R]aising interest rates is the traditional way. It is supposedly the intellectual way. It is the way by which you contain inflation. It has not been working in the way that it should. Now, what he did — what Powell did in this last raise was he tried to keep it low to 25 basis points. But, of course, it doesn’t look good right now. We may be in for a recession. And he’s got to do everything that he possibly can. Everybody’s got to weigh in. If there is a better answer, we’ve got to find it. We’ve got to find that answer. We don’t have it now. This is all that we have as a traditional way of containing inflation, is a rise in interest rates. I don’t like it. My constituents don’t like it. Young people who want to buy a house don’t like it because the interest rates are just too high. There are some people, of course, who make money off of rising interest rates, but the average person does not. And so, no, we’re in a point in time in the history of our economics that the answers do not appear to be there, but we’ve got to do everything that we can to bring down inflation and contain the rise in interest rates.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Nearly $120 Billion of Deposits Were Pulled From Small Banks as Silicon Valley Failed NOAH BERGER/AFP via Getty Images 1:31
Customers of small U.S. banks pulled a record $119.9 billion of deposits in the seven days ending March 15, data released by the Federal Reserve showed Friday.
The decline in deposits at small U.S. banks was the largest in records going back to 1973.
That figure is seasonally adjusted. On a not-seasonally adjusted basis, small banks lost $107.8 billion.
Much of those deposits went to large banks. These saw deposits rise by $66.7 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis and $119.8 billion before seasonal adjustment.
On the whole, deposits at commercial banks in the U.S. fell by a seasonally adjusted $98.4 billion, according to the Fed data. Not seasonally adjusted, the decline was $52.8 billion.
The data cover the seven days that ended on Wednesday, March 15.
Large banks are defined as the top 25 domestically chartered commercial banks, ranked by domestic assets. So Silicon Valley Bank, which was the 18th largest bank by assets, would be counted among the large banks that, as a group, gained deposits. In other words, the decline in deposits among small banks does not include deposits that were withdrawn from Silicon Valley Bank.
...... and the 'speech fee' bribes rolled in!
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors
Harvard Prof., Fmr. IMF Economist Rogoff: Fed, Treasury Support for Bailouts of Billionaire Depositors Will Incentivize Risk, Create Problems VIDEO
On Wednesday’s broadcast of “PBS NewsHour,” Harvard University Economics Professor and former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund Ken Rogoff said that the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have signaled that they’ll “protect depositors, even ones with billions of dollars they’ve bailed out with Silicon Valley Bank” and this will lead to bankers engaging in more risky behavior and “bigger problems in the future.”
Rogoff stated, “I feel like the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have kind of broadcast that they’re going to protect depositors, even ones with billions of dollars they’ve bailed out with Silicon Valley Bank. I think they’re going to continue that. That has a lot of problems, because bankers will do more risky things. It’s going to lead to bigger problems in the future. But they’ve really telegraphed that. The problem is, the other side of the coin is that everyone’s worried the banks will not be able to lend as much. The regulators are going to be looking harder. They’re going to have to raise deposit rates, and they’ll have [fewer] profits to lend out. So, for the moment, it looks like they’ve contained the panic. But, longer term, bankers do risky stuff, and they certainly aren’t reining that in. And the more they regulate it, the harder it’s going to be to get loans. So, there are certainly problems ahead.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Dem Rep. Sherman: FDIC Insurance Used to Backstop SVB Depositors Is ‘Not Free’ and ‘Cost Is Passed on to the Depositor’ VIDEO
1:34
On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) stated that the FDIC insurance that was used to backstop depositors at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and that federal officials have said could be used in the future to backstop depositors “is not free” and “Ultimately, that cost is passed on to the depositor.”
Sherman said that he supports increasing the deposit insurance limit, and “If you’re using the bank as a utility, as a system to pay your bills, then you shouldn’t have to check to see whether that bank is strong or very strong, you should be able to use it as a utility. A million or even higher might be in order. Whereas, if you’re making a million-dollar investment, there’s some onus on you to determine that you’re investing in a sound bank.”
He continued, “The other thing is that FDIC insurance is not free. Ultimately, that cost is passed on to the depositor. If you’re putting — giving your money to the bank on an interest-free basis in a non-interest-bearing account, there’s no way for them to lower the interest rate any lower and so depositors don’t suffer. On the other hand, if you impose this cost on people buying certificates of deposit or other investment accounts, then the bank is going to pass through the cost of the insurance and there’s going to be a real detriment to depositors.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
As if caught in an ever more powerful vortex, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen was this week wrenched this way and that over the issue of how much support the government and financial authorities should provide to wealthy uninsured bank depositors.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the House Appropriations Committee on Budget and Oversight hearing on March 23, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana] On Tuesday, she told a meeting of bankers the government was ready to extend the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank depositors, some of them holding tens of millions of dollars in their accounts, to such depositors at other banks if necessary.
This was correctly recognized as an implicit guarantee by the government that it was backing all the money held in the US banking system, a total of more than $17 trillion, and there was “free market” based criticism, most notably from the Wall Street Journal.
The chief concern of the WSJ is not the handing out of money to the rich and super rich per se but what such a guarantee ultimately means for the stability of government finances and US capitalism as a whole if the market cannot do its work in carrying out necessary purges.
In response to this and other criticism, the next day Yellen told a Senate committee that financial authorities were not contemplating “blanket” coverage for deposits above the limit covered by legislation of $250,000.
Wall Street gave Yellen’s remarks the thumbs down. It fell sharply in the last half hour of trading on Wednesday with the Dow dropping more than 500 points.
The treasury secretary, who, like all government officials, attempts to portray herself as a servant of the mass of the population, got the message from the real powers that be.
On Thursday, she reversed course in remarks to a House of Representatives hearing, going back to what she had told the assembled bankers two days before.
“We have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion,” she said. “And they are tools we could use again. The strong actions we have taken ensure that Americans’ deposits are safe. Certainly, we would be prepared to take addition actions if warranted.” Following her remarks Wall Street steadied.
To get a grasp of what is involved in the issue of deposit guarantees it is worthwhile probing behind the immediate figures.
Deposits of up to $250,000 are automatically guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation based on legislation.
The cut off point is well above the amount held by millions of American families who live from pay check to pay check, often having to resort to their credit cards just to make ends meet.
According to official figures, the median balance held by US citizens in their accounts is just $5,300.
Less than half of US households, around four in ten, said they would be able to cover an unexpected expense of $1,000 in January 2022, and that number has probably fallen since then under the impact of continued wage suppression and rising inflation, especially in basic items.
But the wealthy and super-wealthy occupy an entirely different world, and they are demanding it be protected at all costs.
The “Americans” whose deposits Yellen said she was acting to protect are not ordinary workers and their families who have nowhere near $250,000 in their accounts. They are figures such as the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who disclosed that he had $50 million deposited with the failed SVB even after advocating that others not continue to use it. Perhaps he regarded the millions he left there as loose change.
The back and forth of Yellen on the issue of support for the ultra-wealthy and the financial elites is by no means an isolated incident.
Rather, it is a particular expression of the central policies of the Fed, regulatory authorities and the government. Whatever acknowledgements they may make on occasions about the need for sound public policy, they always return to their key mission—the protection of the financial oligarchy that dominates the economy.
That was seen in 2008 when the speculative, and at times outright criminal, activities of finance capital brought about a meltdown of the financial system. Banks and corporations were bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and the Fed made available trillions of dollars under its quantitative easing (QE) program, enabling the speculation to continue.
The working class was made to pay as the unemployment rate rose to double digits, homes were repossessed and exploitation in the factories intensified often through the widespread adoption of the two-tier wage system and temporary working.
The 2008 bailout, QE, and the rampant speculation which resulted meant that when the pandemic struck in early 2020, the administration refused to implement a policy of elimination, fearing the necessary public health measures would bring about a collapse of the financial house of cards.
Accordingly, the Trump administration, with the support of the Democrats under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed the CARES Act, handing out billions to the corporations while providing some minor concessions to the mass of the population to try to assuage social anger.
The Fed stepped up again and in response to the March 2020 market freeze pumped in another $4 trillion, acting as the guarantor for every section of the financial system.
But these measures had consequences.
The refusal to eliminate COVID created a supply chain crisis, sparking a jump in inflation. Price hikes were intensified by the flood of cheap money, profit gouging by food and energy companies, commodity market speculation financed by the essentially free money provided by the Fed and other central banks, and the consequences of the US-led NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The eruption of the highest inflation in four decades changed the landscape. Now the Fed was confronted with its greatest fear—the development of an upsurge of the working class and intensification of the class struggle artificially suppressed over the previous three decades and more.
The Fed then made a turn. It started interest rate hikes in March 2022, under the mantra of the need to fight inflation. It is vital to understand the class dynamic at work here for it is the key to understanding the present situation, what is in store, and what must be the response of the working class.
Its measures—the lifting of interest rates from near zero to more than 4.5 percent over a year—have nothing to do with bringing down prices but are directed to suppressing the wages movement of the working class.
This is to be achieved by ending what Fed chair Jerome Powell continually refers to as the “very tight” labour market, through the slowing of the economy, driving up unemployment and inducing a recession if that is considered necessary.
The interest rate hikes have now set in motion a financial crisis, which was exemplified in the collapse of SVB. Flush with money because of the Fed’s QE policies, it placed its funds in Treasury bonds, supposedly the safest financial asset. But as interest rates were hiked, the market value of those bonds fell below their book value.
As long as money kept flowing in this was not a problem. But when money started to flow out, as depositors drew down on their holdings, the bonds had to be sold and the losses realised.
Powell and others have referred to SVB as an “outlier.” But analysis has revealed that its structure is replicated widely. It has been calculated that the market value of bonds held by American banks is down by $1.7 trillion, not far below their capital base of around $2 trillion, essentially wiping it out if these losses had to be realised.
Moreover, small- and medium-sized banks, such as SVB, also hold a major portion of interest rate-sensitive commercial real estate and property development loans, which are being widely predicted as the next shoe to drop.
The development of this crisis has sent a wave of fear through the ultra-rich monied classes. When the problems of SVB surfaced, hedge fund operator Bill Ackman immediately jumped onto Twitter to call for a major intervention, without which the economy could not function properly.
Such reactions reveal that the fabulously wealthy and super-rich have caught a whiff of death as if rising from a grave opening before them.
But does not mean they will somehow advocate reforms—they have none in any case —or their toxic system will simply collapse of its own accord.
Rather, drawing on their long history of repression and violence, their growing fears mean they will implement ever greater attacks on the working class, just as they did after 2008, and demand the continued supply of money from the capitalist state to maintain their world of wealth and privilege at the expense of society.
For the working class, the developing crisis poses a direct challenge. It is confronted with the task of making a new world, one based on social equality. That can only be realised through a political struggle to end the capitalist profit system, thereby opening the way for the establishment of socialism, a challenge which must be met by building the revolutionary party to lead this fight.
Carney on ‘Kudlow’: Janet Yellen Was More Concerned About Climate Change Than Looming Banking Crisis
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was more concerned about climate change than the looming risks to our banking system brought on by the rapid rise of interest rates, Breitbart Economics Editor John Carney told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow.
During a panel discussion with Carney on Kudlow’s Friday show, Fox News contributor Liz Peek noted that Yellen was asleep at the switch in the run-up to the current banking crisis.
“Everybody was watching last year as interest rates went up, by the way, [at] the sharpest rate of ascent in modern times,” Peek said. “So, you would think that the regulators—Janet Yellen and that group that she has [of] the financial organizers of our country—would have been watching to see what the impact was on the banks and in particular on the tech sector, which it completely wiped out… It’s offensive that Janet Yellen acts now like she has a plan. She doesn’t have a plan. We know she doesn’t have a plan. But where was she? Where has she been during this period?”
“Well, we know where she’s been,” Carney interjected. “They’ve been sitting there worried about climate change the whole time. Climate change risk all the way. Interest rate risk, the basics of banking—they weren’t paying any attention to.”
“Larry Summers said this—he said instead of worrying about inflation and interest rates, they are worried about climate change. And that’s not the role of central bankers,” Kudlow added.
“By the way, the Financial Stability Oversight Council—which met today , I guess, because they actually realized they have a problem on their hands—in the February meeting, read the readout. It’s available on their website. They were talking about climate. Their ’22 annual report was about climate. I mean, you really can’t make this up. That’s what they were worried about,” Peek noted.
Kudlow also brought up Yellen’s conflicting statements about whether the uninsured depositors of all or only some banks would get a bailout.
“It sounds to me like we will bail out uninsured deposits and every other damn thing,” Kudlow said.
“We almost have to because we’re setting up the expectation,” Carney replied. “It looks very bad if you say, ‘Yeah, we bailed out Silicon Valley Bank, but you other guys, you’re not going to get the bailout’—because then people will start trying to guess who gets a bailout, who doesn’t. You have more banks fail because people flee when they say, ‘Oh, I’m in the bank that doesn’t get it.’”
Carney highlighted an observation the economist Anna Schwartz made about the destabilizing role uncertainty played in the 2008 financial crisis. Schwartz and fellow economist Milton Friedman co-authored the influential 1963 book A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 , which argued that the Federal Reserve’s changing monetary policies played a large role in causing the Great Depression.
“Back in 2008, my brother Brian did an interview with Anna Schwartz, who is a co-author of the book on the Great Depression with Milton Friedman,” Carney said. “One of the things she said was that we were doing things wrong in 2008 because we weren’t following a set rulebook, and we were just doing everything ad hoc. If you do it like that, nobody knows the rules of the road. That creates more instability rather than less.”
Pivoting from the banking crisis, Kudlow asked Carney about the Federal Reserve’s prediction that the economy would contract this year, which, as he noted, was the topic of Thursday’s Breitbart Business Digest .
“If you look at where the Fed thinks growth is going to be this year—full year—it’s 0.4 percent, down a little bit from back in December,” Carney explained. “So, if we’re growing at 2 percent now, we’re probably going to be growing more than one percent in the second quarter… How do you get it all the way down to 0.4? You have to have a pretty steep contraction in the third or fourth quarter. The Fed—they hate to say that. They don’t want to admit it. But that is what those numbers mean. They’re saying we’re predicting a very steep downturn in the second half of this year.”
As Carney noted in Friday’s Breitbart Business Digest:
There are plenty of reasons why Fed officials do not want to forecast a recession . For one thing, [Federal Reserve] Chairman Jerome Powell still maintains that there exists “a path” to a soft landing. For another, the Fed is hesitant to appear to be rooting for a recession and the hardships recessions bring. By admitting that its policy choices are consistent with a recession, the Fed would be confessing to causing one.
Peek agreed with Carney’s analysis and predicted that Powell will pause his rate hiking and abandon his two percent inflation target in the face of a recession.
“We’re going to enter a slowdown,” Peek said. “The political heat on Jay Powell is going to be scorching, and he’s going to change the target by the end of the year… It is two percent. My guess is we’ll start hearing, well, three is pretty reasonable, 3.2, 3.5, which is kind of what the Fed is expecting by the end of the year. They’re not going to go to two percent.”
Changing the target is a “terrible idea,” Carney said. “If the Fed does back off of the two percent target, which they will feel pressured to, I think that’s going to be a disaster because how do you trust the three percent target? Or the four percent target?”
Kudlow offered a succinct history of the last time the nation faced an inflation crisis and how we got out of it—a topic of which he has personal knowledge from his days serving in the Reagan administration.
“This is where I came in professionally in the 1970s because we were always going to ‘Whip Inflation Now,’ but we never did,” he said. “And then the peaks got higher and the troughs got higher, until a guy named Paul Volcker came and just slayed the monster altogether, and we started from scratch, which I might add, with Reagan’s tax cuts, gave us three decades of prosperity.”
Unfortunately, Peek predicted that Powell would not have the same fortitude as his predecessor Paul Volcker, and the pressures of an election year recession might prove too much for him to withstand.
“Jay Powell is proven to be, I think, a very political animal,” Peek said. “Look at already [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Elizabeth Warren and a lot of senators are coming out and saying, ‘Oh, we can’t raise rates anymore. This is harsh. This is going to lead to unemployment.’ Yes, that’s what Jay Powell has said he wants to do. It’s unacceptable for the Democratic Party trying to keep the Oval Office next year.”
Bank Bailouts and the Chaotic Consequences of Redefining Rules US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (Getty Images)
Referees aren’t supposed to change the rules in the middle of the game, but that’s exactly what federal government officials like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have been doing in financial markets over the last two weeks.
The result is a chaotic mess wherein no one knows what the rules will be tomorrow and no one can plan for the future. What is allegedly a highly regulated sector of the economy feels more like a roll of the dice lately. The economy needs stable banks, which requires stable rules.
Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse earlier this month is the second-largest bank failure in American history, and the federal government’s response has been inconsistent at best.
Regulators previously declared the bank not to be a systemic risk to the banking system, meaning the bank’s potential failure would not pose a threat to the rest of the banking system. Yet when it was clear Silicon Valley Bank would fail, the rules changed and the bank was declared a systemic risk.
On that basis, the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped in to prevent the bank’s liquidation. But they decided to change yet another rule in the process—deposit insurance.
Bank customers’ deposits are ordinarily insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. up to $250,000, and private insurance is available for additional coverage beyond that. Silicon Valley Bank’s customers chose not to avail themselves of that protection, however, despite over 96% of the bank’s depositors having cash at the bank in excess of the $250,000 FDIC guarantee.
To prevent those large depositors from losing any of their money, the Treasury and the Fed decided to guarantee all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank , despite the fact that the FDIC clearly does not offer unlimited deposit coverage. Millionaires who had their money at the bank are now receiving the benefit of insurance even though they never paid for it.
Imagine a person who could buy flood insurance for his home but chooses not to do so and then the home is destroyed in a flood. That person is not entitled to a bailout from the government—at taxpayer expense.
This unprecedented expansion of FDIC coverage was followed by statements from the Biden administration that Americans could rest assured that all deposits are safe.
But the rules were about to change again. Yellen was asked during her Senate testimony a few days ago whether all depositors at regional banks, like Silicon Valley Bank, are covered by the recent change in the rules regarding the FDIC. Shockingly, Yellen said no.
Only deposits at banks deemed systemically important could be guaranteed coverage, regardless of the size of the deposit. Which regional banks are systemically important? Yellen couldn’t say—that determination would be made on a case-by-case basis going forward. She reiterated this vague canon on Tuesday when she told the American Bankers Association, “Similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion.” That’s hardly black and white.
Not only have the rules changed again, but now the referees can’t even clearly articulate them. The result has been a flood of large deposits fleeing smaller banks for larger banks that have already been declared systemic risks requiring government support. That cash drain from the smaller banks could put them at risk and precipitate even more problems in the already-troubled banking sector.
One of the reasons for these troubles is because banks are holding so many low-interest rate bonds. But that situation is itself a result of the federal government changing the rules of the game. When the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long in order to finance trillions of dollars in government deficit spending, the yield on bonds plummeted, and the banks buying those bonds took on tremendous interest rate risk.
Those banks were encouraged to continue that behavior because the Fed continued offering forward guidance that rates would remain low and that inflation was transitory. But that narrative changed one year ago, in March 2022, and interest rates began to rise. Just a few months after that initial rate hike, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a larger 75-basis-point hike was “off the table,” and the Fed promptly followed that pronouncement by delivering four such rate hikes in a row.
It’s no fun if a party host randomly changes the rules of a game when everyone is in the middle of playing. But at least the trouble ends there. When the government changes the rules of banking without warning, the results can be financial disaster that cascades through the economy for years to come.
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors BERNIE SANDERS: The bank who begged for deregulation is the same one who begged for a bailout.
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder
told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the
national economy.” AS THEY LOOTED TRILLIONS FROM
THE ECONOMY AND THEN PASSED ALONG SOME OF THE
LOOT IN THE FORM OF 'SPEECH FEE' BRIBES!
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
The Republican staff of the US House Committee on Financial Services released a report Monday presenting its findings on why the Obama Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder chose not to prosecute the British-based HSBC bank for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
As for the release of Democratic Party emails, even if one accepts the unsubstantiated claim that it was Russian operatives who turned them over to WikiLeaks, what the emails revealed were true facts about the operations of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—facts that the electorate had every right to know. Among the documents released were Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, for which she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other leaked emails exposed the corrupt efforts of the DNC to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders.
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Treasury Department, Janet Yellen, raked in millions from Wall Street firms and multinational corporations for “speaking fees” over just the past two years, financial disclosure reports reveal.
Between 2019 to 2020, Yellen accepted more than $7.2 million from Wall Street firms and big banks like Citibank, Bank of America, Citadel, Barclays, ING, UBS, and Goldman Sachs, as well as multinational corporations like Deloitte, Google, Salesforce, and HSM.
Yellen, former Federal Reserve chair for President Barack Obama, took nearly $1 million to give nine speeches to Citibank — which is one of the largest banks in the United States. Likewise, Yellen accepted more than $800,000 from the hedge fund Citadel.
Yellen’s speaking fees from Wall Street firms and corporations range anywhere between $17,100 to nearly $300,000, according to the financial disclosures. Her latest paid speeches came in November 2020 when she cashed in $67,500 in fees from Deloitte, $72,000 from Daiwa Securities Group, and $45,000 from Magellan Financial Group.
Biden tapped Yellen as his nominee to lead the Treasury Department where she would become the first woman to lead the agency if confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Glenn Greenwald, an independent journalist, called Democrats “a neoliberal party” that “hide” behind diversity to avoid questions regarding cronyism.
“The Dems are a neoliberal party which serves Wall St & corporate power,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter. “They are overwhelmingly led by extremely rich people who serve these power centers. Touting diversity is how they try to hide that, and bad faith bigotry accusations are how they punish those who report it.”
Nolte: Bribes and Payoffs Disguised as ‘Speaking Fees’ for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky 5:30
Janet Yellen, the former chairwoman of the Federal Reserve who is now His Fraudulency Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary, made millions off Wall Street “speaking fees” over the past two years.
In some cases, she didn’t even have to show up to speak. Her appearance was “virtual.”
In just two years, according to the Wall Street Journal , Yellen pulled in “more than $7 million in speaking fees during more than 50 in-person and virtual engagements … according to financial disclosures[.]”
The far-left Politico adds :
Yellen listed $952,200 in income from speeches to Citi, one of the nation’s largest banks. She also disclosed speaking fees from PIMCO, Barclays (BCS), Citadel, BNP Paribas, UBS (UBS), Credit Suisse (CS), ING, Standard Chartered Bank and City National Bank.
Nearly a million bucks … from one bank !
Fox Business reports :
Other companies shelling out big bucks for Yellen’s words of wisdom have included Goldman Sachs, Google, City National Bank, UBS, Citadel LLC, Barclays and Salesforce, according to the report.
So when the White House was asked this week if Yellen’s speaking fees have created a painfully obvious conflict of interest as it relates to this Gamestop/Robinhood/Reddit story, Press Secretary Lyin’ Ginger sputtered:
I don’t have anything further for you on it, except for to say, separate from this Gamestop issue, the Treasury Secretary is a world-renowned expert on the economy.
It should not be a surprise to anyone that she was paid to give her expert advice before she came into office.
Oh, well, that certainly puts the issue to rest!
I mean the fact that (as Real Clear Politics perfectly summarized it ) “Citadel, the firm that bailed out the first hedge fund to be bankrupted by the crowd-sourced stock-buying bonanza this week, has paid Yellen more than $800,000 in speaking fees in recent years,” is nothing to be concerned about! Not even as we watch a countless number of everyday retail investors getting shut down in an effort to protect Yellen’s billionaire pals at Citadel and elsewhere.
If you want a look at how this grift works, Jack Posobiec tweeted out a bare bones list of Yellen’s Wall Street speaking fees, and this simple list is more striking than any newspaper write-up. The numbers are outrageous. Why would anyone drop hundreds of thousands of dollars to have some former fed chair come in to tell tired war stories and do some punditry?
What I mean by that is: What’s the benefit to the financial firm shelling out all this money (plus airfare and fancy accommodations)?
Even more, what’s the benefit if she appears virtually from her kitchen at home?
Does the presence of a 74-year-old former-Fed Chair bring these financial firms more customers? Does the prestige and star power of such an appearance increase the firm’s client list?
Of course not.
You wouldn’t walk across the street to see Janet Yellen for free, even if free lunch was served.
So what does this tell us about these speaking fees?
Sorry, but these speaking fees are nothing more than America’s elites figuring out a way to legalize bribes and payoffs. That’s it. That’s all that’s going on here.
While it may not be legal for me to hand you an envelope full of cash, it’s perfectly legal for me to fly you out in a private plane (or first class), put you up in a suite, wine you and dine you, and then hand you a gazillion dollar check for an hour’s work because wink-wink-nod-nod-knowwhatImean-knowwhatImean?
We see the same thing all the time with book advances.
Some pol is paid an exorbitant amount of money to write a ghost-written book no one reads…
Get this…
In 2014, Gov. Andrew “Grandma Slayer” Cuomo (D-NY) was paid a $783,000 advance by Harper Collins to write his memoirs, which sold exactly 3,800 total copies. Harper Collins lost a fortune.
So why did the company do it?
Why would a publisher be willing to take a beating like that?
Gee, could it be that Harper Collins is New York-based and Cuomo is New York’s governor and this was a legal way to funnel him close to a million dollars in the form of legalized graft?
It gets worse…
Cuomo has so far refused to disclose how much Penguin Random House paid for his 2020 book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic last year, but what we do know is that another major publisher gave this proven-failure of an author a second money grab.
The whole system is rigged, y’all.
The political media, the politicians, the government, and the financial media all attack who? The robber barons in these hedge funds who organize to make billions by destroying a company? No, they illegally shut down and smear the everyday guys on Reddit who had the temerity to play the same game and win.
Funnel a few million to Yellen, give CNNLOL and CNBC some nifty stock tips… That’s all it costs Wall Street to protect its billions and destroy the Reddit barbarians, whose only sin is outsmarting you.
And it’s all legal.
Rigged. Rigged. Rigged.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC . Follow his Facebook Page here .
GOP Rep. Steube: Yellen Getting Speaking Fees from Banks She’ll Decide on Bailouts for Is ‘Corruption’ ‘Beyond the Pale’
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On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Evening Edit,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) stated that there is a “level of corruption in Washington” that “is beyond the pale” and cited Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen received $7 million in speaking fees before she took the office, including from major financial institutions “that she’s going to decide to bail out.”
Host Elizabeth MacDonald asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:15] “I’ve been covering bank crises since the ’80s, S&L crisis, then Long-Term Capital Management, then the 2007 — the dotcom bust, they did corporate accounting scandals, then in 2007-2008, Congressman, nobody ever said back up uninsured deposits ever. This is because of a few banks that made bad bets, and all of a sudden, the Biden White House gets to change the rules that have been the gold standard forever, when even FDR said do not insure bank deposits, bankers will roll the dice and ruin things. So, where do you go from here, Congressman, will you guys try to stop this push that’s now — it’s moving, that could happen? What do you think?”
Steube responded, “Well, we will absolutely, in the House and Chair McHenry (R-NC), we were all together, the caucus was together in Orlando today. And he said he doesn’t support bank bailouts. He didn’t support it before. He doesn’t support it now. That’s the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee. You’re not going to not see the Republicans support that at all. And what I find very interesting is Yellen herself got millions of dollars, $7 million in speaking fees before where she’s at now from some of the banks that she’s going to decide to bail out. The level of corruption in Washington is beyond the pale.”
Summers: First Republic Bank Rescue Package Seems ‘Corporatist and Deal-Based Between the Government and Big Banks’ During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Harvard Professor, economist, Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton Larry Summers stated that the rescue package for First Republic Bank “was not an objective private sector assessment to have confidence in First Republic.” And “seemed a little corporatist and deal-based between the government and big banks to me.”
Summers said, “It was JPMorgan and a number of other banks who were apparently corralled by the secretary and by JPMorgan. I don’t know what to make of it. The government has committed to put money in there at par above the market value of securities for a year. The fact that the banks made a commitment for 120 days so they can get out well ahead of the government at an interest rate that we don’t yet know what it is, with what the understandings in the agreement with the Treasury are. I suppose the fact that everybody’s acting will make people a little more confident. But it made me nervous. This was not an objective private sector assessment to have confidence in First Republic. So, I’m not sure what to make of it. It seemed a little corporatist and deal-based between the government and big banks to me. But we’ll have to see how it unfolds. And I hope there will be total transparency on all the understandings.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Here Are the Tech Companies, Liberal Media Outlets, and Prominent Democrats Saved by Biden's Bank Bailout Getty Images Prominent tech companies, liberal news outlets, and a Democratic politician’s vineyards are among the thousands of businesses that breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when the Biden administration moved to bail out Silicon Valley Bank.
Silicon Valley Bank maintained $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in total deposits, making it the 16th-largest bank in the country. It was the second-largest bank to fail in American history when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took control of the institution on Friday.
President Joe Biden has insisted that the FDIC's move was not a bailout, and claimed his administration is working to protect "American workers and small businesses." But average Americans won't benefit the most from the bailout. Ninety-three percent of the bank’s depositors kept more than $250,000 in the bank.
While the California bank was famous for its rolodex of tech clients, it happily accepted deposits from all manner of people, including some of the individuals and institutions involved in pushing the Biden administration’s bailout.
Here are just a few.
Gavin Newson
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) trio of wineries are clients of the failed financial institution, as is the governor himself. He has maintained personal accounts at the failed bank for years, the Intercept reported , citing a former Newsom aide. Newsom’s efforts to rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s clients could also put him on the wrong side of the law. California law prohibits elected officials from influencing official matters in which "the official has a financial interest," Insider reported .
Newsom was instrumental in convincing Biden over the weekend that a bailout of the failing bank was necessary. He was also one of the first politicians nationwide to hail the president’s swift move on Sunday to make all of Silicon Valley Bank’s clients whole. Newsom was one of many high-profile Democrats who received money from Silicon Valley Bank, whose employees have also given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes.
The emotional toll Newsom may have faced had his wineries failed amid Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion would have likely been equally as devastating as the impact on his bottom line. He refused to sell his businesses when he first ran for governor in 2018, saying : "These are my babies, my life, my family. I can’t do that. I can’t sell them."
BuzzFeed
Liberal online media company BuzzFeed revealed to investors Monday that it held $56 million in cash and cash equivalents as of the end of 2022, the majority of which was held at Silicon Valley Bank. The news capped off a not-so-banner 2022 fiscal year for BuzzFeed, in which the company weathered a net loss of $201.3 million, laid off 40 percent of its newsroom, and saw its stock price plummet by 90 percent.
BuzzFeed has placed little focus on the bank’s collapse, having mentioned the story in its morning newsletter , a quiz published Wednesday, as well as a passing reference in a Tuesday story about a "viral alpha male finance podcast parody sketch." None of the stories mentioned BuzzFeed’s financial connection to the bank.
As part of its efforts to right its ship, BuzzFeed announced it would leverage artificial intelligence to spin up viral listicles and quizzes. BuzzFeed News editor in chief Karolina Waclawiak also told the company’s remaining editorial staffers at a recent meeting to shift away from long-form news reporting and prioritize click-bait celebrity news, the Wall Street Journal reported .
Vox Media
Vox Media, the parent company of dozens of liberal news companies including Vox , New York magazine, the Verge , and Polygon , disclosed in news stories that it banked with Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse.
Unlike BuzzFeed, Vox has disclosed its financial connection to the failed bank in news stories this week. That hasn’t stopped the outlet, however, from carrying water for the Biden administration. On Tuesday, for example, it published a story mocking concerns that Silicon Valley Bank’s fixation on woke initiatives may have contributed to its demise.
Vox spokeswoman Lauren Starke told the Washington Post that the company doesn’t anticipate "any significant impact" due to the bank’s failure but added that it has suffered "logistical issues such as the temporary suspension of accounts and company credit cards."
In a Monday piece on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, Vox competitor the Dispatch parenthetically disclosed it had been a Silicon Valley Bank customer.
Black Lives Matter
While Black Lives Matter isn’t a known client of Silicon Valley Bank, the bank’s untimely failure marks the end of a significant gravy train for the movement.
Silicon Valley Bank and its employees contributed more than $73 million to the Black Lives Matter movement and related causes since 2020, according to a database maintained by the Claremont Institute.
The Green Energy Racket
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure could have delivered a seismic blow to the climate change industry and the more than 1,550 technology companies that specialize in solar, hydrogen, and battery storage solutions that held funds at the bank, had Biden not bailed the institution out.
Still, the bank’s failure will have lingering effects for the industry, with insiders warning that Silicon Valley Bank was often the only institution willing to lend funds for their projects.
"Silicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank," Kiran Bhatraju, the chief executive of the nation’s largest community solar manager, Arcadia, told the New York Times . "When you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage."
Wedbush Securities technology sector analyst David Ives added that the bank’s failure is a "major blow to early-stage and even late-stage tech startups."
Silicon Valley Bank "was the bank that would always pick up the phone when other large money center banks wouldn’t," Ives told Politico .
HA, HA, HA! - LOTS OF LAUGHS! WATCH IT NOT HAPPEN!
DNC, Joe Biden Will Return Campaign Donations Tied to SVB The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign stated they would return political donations tied to the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, according to USA Today .
The DNC told the publication that the money would be returned following last week’s bank collapse. The announcement was made the same day the bank’s parent company, SVB Financial Group, filed for Chapter 11 protection in New York bankruptcy court.
A spokesperson from the DNC told USA Today that Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and the DNC would donate the contributions from 2020 or later from SVB CEO Greg Becker and the bank’s managing director, Gerald Brady.
USA Today reported that Biden’s presidential campaign and aligned PACs received at least $11,900 from SVB executives, including Brady, and the former brand ambassador and head of startup banking, who took over one of Brady’s roles running a division of the bank, Claire Lee. Additionally, the DNC took at least $32,250 over the years from Brady, Lee, and other former SVB executives.
The report also noted that Becker donated $2,800 to Biden’s campaign, and Brady donated $5,500. Brady also gave $12,050 to the DNC. Reportedly, Biden’s presidential campaign will return $8,400, and the DNC will return $12,050.
Last week, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed when panicked customers suddenly withdrew tens of billions of dollars after it announced a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from selling its investments in U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Ultimately, regulators shut Silicon Valley Bank down, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of the bank and said they would protect insured deposits.
On Sunday, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC announced that they would be taking “decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in [the U.S.] banking system” by effectively making deposits above the FDIC’s $250,000 limit available this past Monday. The bank failed to be auctioned off last weekend after none of the largest U.S. banks bid, but there is supposed to be another attempt at auctioning the bank off on Friday, according to multiple reports.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss .
Maxine Waters Unfit to Chair House Financial Services CommitteeConsidering her record and documented history of poor ethical and moral fitness, it’s outrageous that Maxine Waters is up for chair of the ultra-powerful House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the country’s banking system, economy, housing, and insurance.
Judicial Watch investigated the scandal and obtained documents from the U.S. Treasury related to the controversial bailout. The famously remiss House Ethics Committee, which is charged with investigating and punishing corrupt lawmakers like Waters, found that she committed no wrongdoing . The panel bought Waters’ absurd story that she allocated the money as part of her longtime work to promote opportunity for minority-owned businesses and lending in underserved communities even though her husband’s bank was located thousands of miles away from the south Los Angeles neighborhoods she represents in Congress.
HA, HA, HA! - LOTS OF LAUGHS! WATCH IT NOT HAPPEN!
Maxine Waters Plans to Return Donations from Collapsed Silicon Valley Bank’s PAC
AP Photo/Evan Vucci 2:55
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said she plans to give back the campaign donations she received from the political action committee for Silicon Valley Bank.
Following the bank’s collapse last week, Waters said she would return the $2,500 from the bank’s PAC she took in late 2020 when she was chair of the Financial Services Committee in the Democrat majority.
“Yes, I will send it back,” she told Politico on Tuesday. “Everybody knows I have an open-door policy.”
A pedestrian passes a Silicon Valley Bank branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023. As the primary regulator of the bank, the Federal Reserve is coming under sharp criticism from financial watchdogs and banking experts. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
The congresswoman’s decision comes after some initial political blowback happened over the weekend with the bank’s collapse after federal investigators had reportedly decided to open a probe into the bank’s failure.
Waters told Politico that she recalled talking to someone from the bank around 2020 about FinTech but did not remember many details.
Waters also told Politico that she has not spoken to the bank about a 2018 bill that loosened up regulations for some, such as Silicon Valley Bank. Lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank were among those who lobbied for a bipartisan measure in 2018, which Waters opposed.
Philosophically, I’m opposed to deregulation, always have been, been consistent on it, and will continue to be,” she noted.
The Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week when panicked customers suddenly withdrew tens of billions of dollars after the bank announced a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from selling its investments in U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Ultimately, regulators shut Silicon Valley Bank down, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of the bank and said they would protect insured deposits.
On Sunday, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC announced that they would be taking “decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in [the U.S.] banking system” by effectively making deposits above the FDIC’s $250,000 limit available Monday. Over the weekend, the Silicon Valley Bank failed to be auctioned off after none of the largest U.S. banks bid. However, the FDIC reportedly plans to attempt a second auction for the bank.
Politico noted that Silicon Valley Bank’s PAC had given more than $50,000 in campaigns contribution to nearly two dozen senators and representatives from 2017 to 2022. The donations mainly went to Republicans and Democrats who served on the relevant committees such as House Financial Services Committee or Senate Finance Committee.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss .
Biden Is Now Resurrecting One of Obama’s Most Treacherous Initiatives
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images 2:00
The following content is sponsored by InvestorPlace .
If you think your money is safe in your bank account, Biden has other plans.
A former bank insider is going public with a warning. He’s uncovered how Biden plans to take control of American bank accounts.
In his controversial message , this insider holds nothing back:
“I believe [Biden’s new program is] now designed to target ALL American citizens who dare disagree with the Dems’ progressive agenda. ”
Perhaps most disturbing of all is how this program was the original brainchild of Obama .
For decades, this insider has helped the financial elite avoid some of the worst financial bloodbaths in American history – including the Black Monday crash in 1987, the dot-com crash in 2000, and even the 2008 financial crisis.
His name is Louis Navellier, and he manages over $1 billion in private client money.
These days, when he delivers an urgent warning , he gets attention.
Chief Investment Officer Louis Navellier (Courtesy of InvestorPlace)
Even though he frequently appears on national news to deliver his expertise, Mr. Navellier’s exposé on Biden is far too controversial for the mainstream media. He chose to release his findings on his website .
This disturbing move by Biden could send an earthquake through our country’s entire financial system. Mr. Navellier’s message reveals the immediate steps you need to take .
If you’re concerned about what’s happening to this country, you’re going to want to see what Mr. Navellier has to say. (His message is available here for a limited time. )
Within the first 30-45 seconds, you’ll see how Biden plans to target certain Americans.
We can’t promise that viewing this will be easy. But it could help you stay safe.
To see Louis Navellier’s warning, click here right now .
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
Silicon Valley Bank Board Included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Donors
David McNew/Getty Images 2:43
Several Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) board of directors have donated thousands of dollars or have direct ties to prominent Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Federal investigators are now looking into the role the board may have played in the bank’s abrupt collapse, as the board members failed to prevent its failure.
Although there are 12 board members, several are under scrutiny for their donations and connections to Democrat politicians.
For example, director Kate Mitchell is a Clinton mega-donor who prayed at a shrine after Clinton’s 2016 loss to former President Donald Trump.
“I prayed for me and us to get beyond our grieving and shock and to figure out how to engage and listen to what happened and come back together,” Mitchell said .
Mitchell also donated $50,000 to Clinton’s victory fund, the New York Post reported .
Next on the list of Democrat donor SVB board members is Garen K. Staglin, who owns a vineyard less than 15 minutes from the Pelosi family’s Napa Valley estate.
As the New York Post detailed :
He gave the Biden Victory Fund $10,000 in 2020, sent $54,000 to Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund in 2016 (on top of $25,000 the previous year), backed Obama with $35,800 in 2011 and gave the Democratic National Committee $10,000 last year.
Some board members also donated to political action committees for Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, the Post reported.
Another SVB board member with ties to prominent Democrats is Mary J. Miller, who served as Obama’s domestic finance undersecretary at the Treasury Department for two years.
As the Post noted , the “only real banker” on the Silicon Valley Bank board is Tom King, the board’s newest director. King brings 35 years of experience in investment banking to the board, having spent years at Citigroup and Barclays.
The Post also reported that the Democrat donations were part of SVB’s business model. “Everyone knew it was the go-to bank for woke CEOs,” one source told the outlet. “They knew they were aligned politically. The companies SVB loaned money to all had a woke agenda.”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter .
Pollak: Barney Frank Returns, 14 Years After Our Fight at Harvard Michael Springer/Bloomberg via Getty 6:24
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is at the center of another financial crisis — this time on the board of now-defunct Signature Bank, which was closed by New York State and taken over by federal authorities on Sunday.
I ronically, given his general zeal for regulation, and the Dodd-Frank law that bears his name, Frank has pushed back against claims that regulatory easing caused the panic that took down Signature and Silicon Valley Bank.
Instead, Frank blamed government hostility to the cryptocurrency industry, which his bank had supported. And as a board member, he had once argued that smaller banks should be exempt from the regulations he created.
Whatever the reason, it is hard to ignore Frank’s curious presence at the scene of yet another oversight failure that could take down the entire financial system.
In 2008, as the financial crisis unfolded, Frank chaired the House Financial Services Committee. The meltdown happened on his watch — after he and fellow Democrats had zealously resisted efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, leading to the subprime mortgage crisis.
In April 2009, Frank — still in charge of the committee, and tasked with writing new legislation to regulate the country’s large financial institutions — came to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to give a speech.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, addresses an audience at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., Monday, April 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
It was an evening that would change my life.
My fiancée and I were both about to graduate — she from college with a degree in economics, and me from law school. Neither of us had jobs yet, thanks in part to the recession.
We decided to go to the lecture out of simple interest. I happened to have been studying tax law in my final semester, and I had planned to ask a question about the constitutionality of a tax on Wall Street bonuses.
But as I stood in line behind the microphone, waiting my turn, I became astonished at Frank’s approach to the crisis, which he sought to blame squarely on Republicans, all the way back to President Taft a century before.
So when my turn came, I asked : “How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?”
He blew up at me.
VIDEO
B ut I had also just taken a trial advocacy course, and had learned how to handle a hostile witness.
So I asked the question again.
We went back-and-forth for several minutes, much to the audience’s delight, and then I went home. I thought the exchange might merit a mention in the Harvard Crimson , but nothing more.
As it happened, there was a camera from the local Fox affiliate in the room. They aired the argument, and it was picked up by the Drudge Report.
Suddenly, I was famous — and everyone, even MSNBC, wanted an interview.
Looking back, I think what resonated with people was the idea that a student — nobody, really — could stand up to one of the most powerful members of Congress.
You have to remember the political atmosphere of the time: Barack Obama had just taken office, and there was a new and stifling sense of political correctness. A new elite felt entitled to dictate terms to everyone.
This was the time when Miss California, Carrie Prejean, lost her title because she defended states’ prerogatives to define their own marriage laws — the same position as Obama.
After being at the mercy of powerful people for months — first the titans of Wall Street, then the big shots of the Beltway — many people, even Democrats, enjoyed watching a big ego being punctured by a simple question. I even received a congratulatory email from Professor Laurence Tribe, who thought the whole thing was great.
For 48 hours — until I went offline for the Jewish holiday of Passover — my life was a whirlwind. When I came back to campus, the dean’s office asked me to pick up my fan mail.
Then the Illinois Republican Party called.
The GOP wanted to run candidates in as many districts as possible, and they were looking for a candidate to challenge Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), my hometown representative.
It was a tough decision. I had already decided to take the California Bar exam. And plenty of people told me to challenge Frank, though I thought (wrongly) that he was invincible, as the first openly gay member of Congress. But in the end, I decided to give it a try.
It was an uphill climb against an entrenched Democrat incumbent in a deep-blue district. Yet conservatives came out of the woodwork to support me.
And I befriended conservative media pioneer Andrew Breitbart.
After the election, I pitched Andrew on the idea of joining his startup company. He eventually agreed, and I moved out to L.A.
I worked alongside Andrew — through Weinergate and the rest of it — until he died in 2012.
I’m still here (and Schakowsky is still in Congress). But Barney Frank somehow found his way to a bank. The man who was supposed to have protected us from another financial meltdown is again at the center of one.
Once again, it’s not his fault. He’s probably right that the Trump-era rollback of Dodd-Frank regulations — which was backed by members of both parties in Congress — did not lead to the current banking crisis.
The likelier cause, as Silicon Valley investor David Sacks explained in a detailed Twitter thread, was simply poor management, as interest rates rose rapidly to fight inflation that was set off by President Joe Biden’s spending.
I’d add that Frank’s assurances in 2009 that new regulations would protect the system may have encouraged reckless behavior by banks and their customers.
Not to worry: Biden says new regulations will be even better.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’ . He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election . He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
Barney Frank Sat on Board for Collapsed Signature Bank Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call 5:24
Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), author of the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill, sat on the board for Signature Bank which collapsed in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) implosion.
The U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced in a joint statement on Sunday the plan to manage the fallout of SVB’s collapse as well as the demise of Signature Bank.
“Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system,” the joint statement read. “This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.”
“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” it added. “All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer.”
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last Friday after depositors rushed to withdraw money in fear of its impending fall. It was the 16th largest bank in the country.
Signature Bank became “popular among crypto companies” and provided “deposit services for its clients’ digital assets but did not make loans collateralized by them” according to Fox Business.
Prior to the SVB collapse, Signature said it had been trying to limit such deposits, pledging it was in a “well-diversified financial position” and had “limited digital-asset related deposit balances in the wake of industry developments.”
“We want to make it clear again that Signature Bank is a well-diversified, full-service commercial bank with more than two decades of history and solid performance serving middle market businesses,” Joseph J. DePaolo, Signature Bank Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement .
“We have built a strong reputation serving commercial clients through nine business lines and reached in excess of $100 billion in assets by continually executing our single-point-of-contact, relationship-based model where banking teams are capable of meeting all client needs,” he added.
File/Retired Congressman Barney Frank arrives for a fundraiser for U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Provincetown, Mass., Aug. 21, 2016. (Keith Bedford/The Boston Globe via Getty)
Frank, who sat on Signature Bank’s board, strongly supported legislation in 2018 that curtailed some of the regulations that his own law Dodd-Frank put in place.
“Dodd-Frank imposed additional regulatory safeguards on banks with more than $50 billion in assets, but the rollback that passed this week, among other things, raises that threshold to $250 billion,” the Washington Post
“Signature Bank has more than $40 billion in assets and can now grow significantly without automatically facing additional regulation. Frank has served on Signature’s board for three years and has received more than $1 million in payments from the bank during that time,” the report added.
When pressed at the time, Frank said while indeed stood to benefit from the rollback, his position at Signature Bank did not influence his decision.
“My being on the board has not changed my position on this at all,” Frank said. “These efforts began well before I began at Signature Bank.”
In 2009, Breitbart News editor-at-large Joel Pollak confronted Frank, who was then the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, asking if he shared any responsibility for the global financial meltdown of 2008.
“Frank, perhaps defensive over charges that he fought Bush administration efforts to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in 2001, dismissed the question as ‘a right-wing attack,’ and challenged the student to make clear what else a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts might have done to prevent the crisis. Per the Los Angeles Times
Frank, perhaps defensive over charges that he fought Bush administration efforts to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in 2001, dismissed the question as ‘a right-wing attack,’ and challenged the student to make clear what else a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts might have done to prevent the crisis.
The student, Joel Pollak, replied that perhaps Frank could have done more to patrol executive bonuses to AIG and other giants bailed out with $700 billion in taxpayer funds. The exchange got pretty heated — another student came to Pollak’s rescue, imploring Frank not to label the student as a conservative but to answer his question.
But Frank insisted that he had not been chairman of the committee before 2007, and was hardly to blame for policies before that.
Speaking with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News after the exchange, Pollak said Frank had been putting too much blame on Republicans.
“When I heard his speech and I heard him blame everyone from Ronald Reagan to the conservatives of the 1930s for opposing whatever it was he was pushing, I thought to myself, Hang on a second,” said Pollak.
File/Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., greets former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., during a bill enrolment ceremony after the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, December 8, 2022. The bill mandates federal protection for same-sex marriages. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“This guy is someone in a position of responsibility and authority. This guy is the one who’s making the regulations. He’s responsible, essentially, for recreating and redesigning our financial system, and he’s not taking any responsibility for what happened at all,” he added.
In every crisis, the two main classes of society align themselves and more and more directly on their fundamental material interests. The program of the ruling class will develop accordingly: rescue operations for the financial oligarchy combined with war and social counterrevolution.
The Baby Boomer retirement crisis is a whole lot worse than we’re being told. Thousands of Baby Boomers hit retirement age every day, but less than half of them are financially ready for retirement. Economists argue that by the end of the decade, Social Security will have gone bankrupt, both the stock market and the economy will take a massive hit, our healthcare system will be completely overwhelmed and our workforce will see a huge gap all due to this crisis. Ultimately, it is going to have a detrimental impact on all of our lives, and the most worrying part of it all is that older Americans predict that conditions are going to get even worse for them in the short and longer term. That’s what we’re going to expose today.
Baby Boomers are going to completely change our economic and financial landscape by the end of this decade. The problem is that economists predict this will be a change for the worse. A generation of this size transitioning out of the workforce will inevitably impact the U.S. economy in many more ways than we’re actually being told right now. With more and more boomers elected to begin receiving Social Security benefits, the outlook for the financial health of the fund is concerning.
Amid an ongoing banking collapse that is forcing the government to bail out huge banks, economists question whether politicians will also bail out its citizens. Considering how shockingly large is our current debt load, with the U.S. national debt surpassing $31 trillion, or $246,868 per taxpayer, it’s not unwise to assume that Social Security is likely to go bankrupt.
At the same time, the Baby Boomer retirement crisis will probably disrupt the U.S. job market in a major way. Economists say that they’re paving the way for what is now called "The Great Retirement," which will likely surpass The Great Resignation as the most significant trend in the labor market in the 21st century. By the fall of 2022, almost 30 million Boomers had retired, an increase of 213% from the previous year, the firm reported.
A recent study by Pew also found that one in four workers in the United States is a boomer, amounting to 41 million in total. “The mass retirement likely will lead to an even wider workforce gap as companies will need to fill positions made available after the Boomers' retirement. These workers generally hold higher positions, making the need for recruiters even more critical,” the researchers highlighted.
Given the incredibly large number of retirements, there will be a huge shift in the balance between supply and demand in the overall economy. In other words, we must brace for a significant decrease in consumer spending, which is a decisive component of GDP. On top of all that, experts anticipate the influx of retiring baby boomers will soon lead to healthcare expenses that will outstrip what most retirees have in savings. That’s why many healthcare providers are warning about deteriorating affordability and accessibility for millions of Americans.
At the end of the day, this isn’t simply a retirement crisis, but an economic and financial crisis that will be felt by all of us. All of this means that the future of our younger generations is being stolen from them as our leaders fail to assist older Americans. In fact, at this point, the future in America no longer looks prosperous and promising, but rather worrying and grim.
WH: Biden 'Is Going to Focus on the American People' -- But He's Going to UK and Ireland Next Week President Biden flashes a big smile at reporters seeking his reaction to Donald Trump's arraignment on April 4, 2023.
(CNSNews.com) - The Biden White House had no comment Tuesday on former President Donald Trump's arraignment.
President Joe Biden, however, flashed a big, wide smile when reporters shouted questions about Trump’s indictment as they were ushered out of the room where Biden was meeting with his science and technology advisers.
At the White House press briefing on Tuesday, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said, "It's an ongoing case, so we’re just not going to comment on the case specifically itself.
"Look, the President is going to focus on the American people, like he does every day," Jean-Pierre said.
"He is not — this is not something that is a focus for him. He is going to focus on things like making sure that the — that we lower — continue to lower prices for the American people."
At least seven times, in response to other questions, Jean-Pierre repeated that Biden's focus "is on the American people."
So it came as a bit of a surprise on Wednesday morning, when Jean-Pierre announced that "President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will travel to the UK (Northern Ireland) and the Republic of Ireland from April 11-14."
It's unclear how this underscores Biden's focus on the American people.
According to the White House statement issued by Jean-Pierre:
"President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will travel to the United Kingdom and Ireland from April 11-14.
"President Biden will first travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland from April 11-12 to mark the tremendous progress since the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago and to underscore the readiness of the United States to support Northern Ireland’s vast economic potential to the benefit of all communities.
"The President will then travel to Ireland from April 12-14. He will discuss our close cooperation on the full range of shared global challenges. He will also hold various engagements, including in Dublin, County Louth, and County Mayo, where he will deliver an address to celebrate the deep, historic ties that link our countries and people.
"Additional information about the trip will be forthcoming."
President Biden often refers to his Irish roots, so the upcoming trip would have personal meaning for him.
Here are the various comments Jean-Pierre made at Tuesday's press conference about Biden's "focus on the American people."
-- "Again, our focus right now is on the American people. And I’m just not going to comment on any ongoing — ongoing case."
-- "What I can tell you for sure is that the President is focused on the American people. That, I know for sure."
--"Look, our focus is always going to be on the American people, doing everything that we can to make sure that we lower costs and meet the American people where they are, which is why the President took the actions that he has taken this past — this past year."
-- "But again, that’s the main — the main focus for this President is the American people. We’ll continue to work with all producers and consumers to — to ensure energy markets, support economic growth, and lower — again, lower prices for the American consumer."
-- "And so, you know, that is what the President is going to continue to focus on: on how to — how do we lower the prices for the American people."
-- "You’re seeing companies, like Micron, take action and continue to invest here in America. And that’s what the President is focused on."
-- "Look, the President is focused on securing America’s energy independence.
-- "So he has an economic policy that’s going to build — build the economy from the bottom up, middle out. That’s going to be his focus. But also lowering costs for the American people, something he talks about very often."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rVZtj7BOow
Food Stamp Spending Doubles to $127 Billion (Getty Images)
Federal government spending soared 40 percent between 2019 and 2023. The government passed large spending bills in response to the pandemic, but spending remains high today even though the crisis has passed.
The ratcheting‐up of spending is evident with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP benefits, or food stamps, are administered by the states but funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and ultimately federal taxpayers.
SNAP spending doubled from $63 billion in 2019 to $127 billion in 2023. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that spending will dip as pandemic benefits expire but will remain far above the 2019 level, as shown in the chart.
Here are some causes of the SNAP spending spike:
The number of recipients increased from 36 million in 2019 to 42 million in 2023. In 2019, CBO projected that the number would fall to 34 million by 2023. The March 2020 pandemic bill provided additional SNAP benefits called emergency allotments, and the Biden administration boosted the amounts. The benefits ended in March 2023. The December 2020 pandemic bill temporarily increased benefits 15 percent, and the Biden administration extended the increase through September 2021. Some SNAP recipients are subject to a three‐month limit on benefits. This work requirement was suspended during the pandemic but is set to be reinstated in 2023. Recipients were allowed to delay eligibility recertification during the early pandemic. The 2018 farm bill directed the USDA to update the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which helps to determine benefit amounts. Angela Rachidi says the update should have been cost‐neutral, but in 2021 the USDA permanently boosted overall benefits by 21 percent . SNAP benefits are adjusted annually for inflation. Some of these changes were temporary, but the TFP and inflation adjustments boosted benefits permanently. AEI analysts calculate that the maximum benefit for a family of four has jumped 46 percent since 2019, while CBPP analysts calculate that the average per‐person benefit has jumped 50 percent.
SNAP is up for reauthorization in this year’s farm bill, which is an opportunity for policymakers to cut costs. The federal government needs to pursue broad spending reforms to reduce dangerously high budget deficits.
Here are some options for SNAP reform:
Beef up work requirements, as proposed by two dozen House Republicans. Eliminate broad categorical eligibility, which states use to loosen eligibility standards notes Leslie Ford . Repeal the 21 percent TFP increase, which was an administrative action that costs taxpayers more than $20 billion a year. Convert SNAP to a fixed block grant for the states and cut spending. Devolve the SNAP program, including funding, to the states as part of a broader effort to revive federalism. There are few advantages in funding such programs federally but many disadvantages .
Originally published in Cato at Liberty ( titled "SNAP Spending Doubles to $127 Billion").
JOE BIDEN: LYING SOCIOPATH GAMER PARASITE LAWYER!
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. JOHN BINDER
NOT ONE CRIMINAL LOOTING BANKSTER WIL EVER GO TO PRISON SO LONG AS THE LAWYER-POLITICIAN DEMS RUN THE ECONMY FOR THE BANKSTER CLASS.
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
NOW WATCH CALIFORNIA ! NOT ! CUT ILLEGALS FROM 'FREE' HEALTHCARE!
'CREDIT CARD' Joe Biden Moves to Cut Medicare Advantage AP Photo/Patrick Semansky 2:34
President Joe Biden’s administration announced that it would cut Medicare Advantage, after the president has frequently claimed that Republicans want to slash Medicare and Social Security.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced this week that they would cut Medicare Advantage by 1.12 percent in 2024, which is not as significant a cut as what the administration proposed two months ago.
Bloomberg reported:
The agency will also phase in controversial changes that determine payments based on the severity of patients’ health problems. That policy will take effect over three years instead of one year, after the proposal drew fierce criticism from the industry.
The changes add up to a near-term victory for the industry, which had argued that the Biden administration went too far in its initial proposal. But the policy may mark the start of a period of slower growth for a market that has doubled in size in the last decade, driving growth and profits at major insurers.
Biden has proposed these cuts to Medicare Advantage as he has frequently accused Republicans of wanting to slash Social Security and Medicare as part of a potential compromise to address the coming debt ceiling deadline.
Republicans such as Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), have called out Biden’s apparently hypocrisy.
Breitbart News reported that Biden sponsored a bill in 1975 that would sunset and reauthorize all federal programs, which includes Social Security and Medicare.
“We must… begin reviewing existing programs to determine whether they are still effective, and whether they are worth the money that we are putting in them. We must eliminate the wasteful ones,” Biden said when introducing the 1975 legislation.
“One thing that we have all observed is that once a federal program gets started, it is very difficult to stop it, or even change its emphasis, regardless of its performance in the past,” then-Sen. Biden continued. “It is time for us to require, on a regular and continuing basis, that both the administrators of these programs and we legislators who adopt the programs, examine their operations with care and detail.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3 .
OBAMACARE WAS WRITTEN BY OBOMB'S BIG PHARMA CRONIES AND THEY'VE RAKED IT IN SINCE!
Obamacare: Still Killing People 13 Years In
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed his namesake legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) colloquially Obamacare, into law. On March 23, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration celebrated the ACA's thirteenth anniversary. They should be holding a funeral, not a celebration party.
The ACA has caused countless avoidable American deaths. They are due to Washington's conflation of a piece of paper (an insurance policy) with a professional service: medical care.
Xavier Becerra, the Health and Human Services secretary, astonishingly missing during the entire COVID health crisis , declared the following: "As we celebrate the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act today ... this law has lived up to its name, providing a way for Americans to access quality, affordable health coverage."
The ACA did indeed expand medical insurance to more Americans. In 2000, Medicaid enrollment was 15.6 percent of the U.S. population. In 2022, that number has nearly doubled: 27.7 percent of Americans — 92,340,585 individuals — were enrolled in the taxpayer-funded, no-charge-to-enrollees program. Thus, nearly one third of the country has medical insurance and, according to Secretary Becerra, "have the peace of mind that comes with high-quality health care ."
Note the conflation of care with insurance. Washington wants you to think having the latter means you get the former, presumably when you need it. Otherwise, what good is insurance? Having insurance does not mean getting timely care. In fact, there is a seesaw effect : as the number of people with government-provided insurance increases, access to care decreases .
Before the ACA, average maximum wait time to see a primary care physician was a unconscionable: 92 days. With ACA expansion of government-provided, no-charge Medicaid insurance, maximum wait times increased to 120 days and produced death-by-queue.
Death by queue is a phrase coined in the United Kingdom, meaning dying while waiting in line for care that is technically possible but unavailable in time to save lives. Death by queue has long been a feature of the vaunted British National Health Service (NHS) and has now become noticeable in the U.S.
In Illinois over three years, 752 Medicaid enrollees died waiting for desperately needed medical treatment. An internal Veterans' Affairs Department audit concluded that "47,000 veterans may have died" waiting in line for care that was technically possible but unavailable. Veterans are covered by federal Tricare insurance.
An accurate estimate of death by queue in the U.S. is not available. In Great Britain, at least "117,000 die[d] on waiting lists for NHS" in 2020 and 2021.
My wife may have been a victim of death-by-queue. She waited seven months before she could see her primary physician for her abdominal pain. The diagnosis was inoperable pancreatic cancer. She died 22 months later. Her case is certainly not unique. Numerous studies prove that delay in diagnosis of life-threatening conditions such as cancer leads to deaths that could be prevented. What is killing these patients is excessive wait times.
The reason for the long wait times and death-by-queue is Washington's repeated fixes applied to healthcare. First there are federal regulations. Physician time that should be spent on patients is consumed by regulatory and administrative burdens.
Second, there is "bureaucratic diversion ," when money is taken from clinical care to pay for bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, and oversight. Each dollar spent on these non-clinical activities is a dollar that cannot be spent on patients. Estimates of this outlay range from 31 percent to 50 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending. In 2021, the U.S. expended $4.3 trillion on its healthcare system. Thus, Washington took roughly $2 trillion away from patients to pay federal (and state) activities that provide no care. Imagine how short wait times could be — can you say 48 hours?! — with an additional $2 trillion available to pay providers! Possibly my wife would be alive today.
For decades, Washington has been fixing health care with federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid (both created in 1965), the Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act of 1986 (which created health care's unfunded mandate ), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and the ACA (2010). Prior to 1965, the U.S. expended 6.5 percent of GDP on health care. Last year, it was 19.7 percent .
The end result of federal over-regulation and all that spending is what we have today: death-by-queue and impending bankruptcy of both Medicare and possibly the U.S.
Biden's "celebration" of Washington's healthcare achievements is a travesty. By constantly increasing government-provided insurance, Democrats increase the number of Americans who die waiting too long for life-saving care.
If we want to shrink wait times, see the doctor before it's too late, and save American lives, kick Washington out of healthcare (the system), stop budget-focused bureaucrats from dictating our health (medical) care, and reconnect patients directly with their doctors with no third-party decision maker in between.
Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science at the University of New Mexico. He is the former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation and author of multi-award-winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare : StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine .
Image via Max Pixel .
Josh Hawley: Biden’s ‘Concierge Service’ for Illegal Aliens Comes at Expense of Americans’ Jobs, Wages Ting Shen/Bloomberg/GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images 4:22
President Joe Biden’s “concierge service” for illegal aliens comes at the expense of Americans’ jobs and wages, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said this week.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Hawley blasted the administration’s migrant mobile app — known as CBP One — that has released more than 30,000 foreign nationals into the United States since early January by allowing them to schedule appointments at the southern border.
Specifically, the migrant mobile app allows foreign nationals who are pregnant, mentally ill, elderly, disabled, homeless, or crime victims living in Mexico to schedule appointments at the border for release into the U.S. interior.
Hawley writes that the migrant mobile app is in effect “like making a restaurant reservation” and will have dire effects on Americans’ jobs and wages:
Under your leadership, the Department is marketing a new phone app, called CBP One, that allows unauthorized migrants to reserve a time to cross the border, like making a restaurant reservation. How convenient. I gather the app is meant to expedite asylum claims, or so your Department’s promotional material says. But I noticed you said nothing about asylum when I asked you at the hearing. And the Texas Monthly has recently reported that “[a]t no point does the app ask users ‘Are you seeking asylum?’” Worse, when migrants show up at the border to enter the country, they “are given no interviews and asked no questions about vulnerabilities they listed in the app or about why they’re seeking asylum in the U.S.—they’re simply released into the country on official parole.” [Emphasis added]
I imagine there are plenty of Americans who would appreciate this level of service from their government. Your choice to spend untold sums of taxpayer money—you said you had no idea what it cost—on concierge service for illegals is baffling. It is also revealing. It demonstrates your priorities: open borders, no matter the cost to Americans; no matter the jobs lost, the wages lost, the drugs flooding our schools. [Emphasis added]
VIDEO
Hawley calls the migrant mobile app “a full-on institutionalization of an open border and the abuse” of U.S. asylum laws, pressing Mayorkas to disclose how many foreign nationals have used the app since its inception, how many are expected to use the app after border controls end in May, and if the app will be updated to ask applicants if they have legitimate asylum claims.
The tech companies involved in the migrant mobile app’s creation, Hawley writes, should also be disclosed to the public and Congress along with the taxpayer costs associated with the app.
Biden’s expansive Catch and Release network at the border is pumping hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, often illegal, into working- and middle-class American jobs. At the same time, fewer Americans are working.
As Breitbart News reported, at the end of 2022, there were nearly two million fewer native-born Americans working compared to the same time in 2019, while two million foreign-born workers have been added to the workforce compared to the same time period.
In particular, the decline in the labor participation rate among working-class native-born Americans has dropped to 70.3 percent at the end of last year compared to 71.4 percent in 2019, 74.8 percent in 2006, and 76.4 percent in 2000.
Working-class native-born American men, those without a bachelor’s degree between 25 to 54 years old, had only an 83.7 percent labor participation rate at the end of 2022 — declining consistently since the year 2000.
The Biden administration has largely ignored efforts to get native-born Americans back into the workforce, instead adding millions of foreign workers to the labor market which adds downward pressure , particularly for working-class Americans in terms of finding jobs and securing higher wages.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Gallup: 83% of Americans View Economic Conditions as 'Poor/Only Fair'
(Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) -- A new survey shows that 83% of American adults view current economic conditions as "only fair" or "poor," reported Gallup. In addition, 72% think economic conditions are getting "worse."
On other issues, only 2% of Americans said "Environemnt/Pollution/Climate change" was the most important problem facing the country, and only 2% said the "situation with Russia" was a top problem.
In the poll, conducted Mar. 1-13, 2023, Gallup asked a random sample of 1,009 adults living in all 50 states and D.C., to describe current economic conditions. In response, 43% said poor, 40% said only fair, 15% said good, and 1% said excellent.
(Gallup.)
As for their outlook on the economy, only 23% said it was "getting better" while 72% said "getting worse."
Gallup also asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?"
In response, 33% said "economic problems (net)," with "high cost of living/inflation" topping the list of concerns at 12%.
Another 12% of Americans said the "economy in general."
(Gallup.)
As for non-economic problems, 20% said "the government/poor leadership" is the most important problem facing America today; 11% said "immigration."
From there, the numbers dropped way off, with 3% citing "crime/violence," 2% citing "race relations/racism," and 2% saying the "situation with Russia."
Despite the Biden administration's push to eliminate fossil fuels and impose a green agenda across the country, only 2% of Americans said climate change was the most important problem.
Also, only 1% of Americans said "guns/gun control" was the main problem. And another 1% said "police brutality."
To read the survey, click here .
(Getty Images)
A devastating car market crash is now in motion, and it will trigger brutal consequences for buyers, sellers, and dealers. The U.S. auto market entered 2023 in a massive bubble, with average new car prices hitting an absolute record high while used car prices were almost 42% higher compared to 2019 levels. But now several factors are contributing to a collapse in the value of cars. At the same time, auto loan debt levels are shooting up and even borrowers with good credit scores are becoming unable to afford car payments and having their vehicles repossessed. A famous industry executive said this could lead the country to the next great financial crisis, and considering the pace at which this downturn is unfolding, it looks like his warning is spot on.
In February 2023, the average cost of a new car climbed to $50,000 in the United States, up from just $38,948 in December 2019. That marked the highest price for a new car in history, according to data compiled by Edmunds. At the same time, a growing number of consumers are having to stretch their budgets to afford a new vehicle. The average monthly payment for a new car is up 26% since 2019 to $718 a month, and nearly one in six new car buyers is spending more than $1,000 a month on vehicles, also a record. Other costs associated with owning a car have also shot up, including insurance, gas, and repairs. "With new car prices as high as they are, it's getting more and more difficult for most Americans to stomach these payments," stresses Ivan Drury, Edmunds director of insights.
After the pandemic broke out, automakers expected car demand to collapse, which led them to reduce output, and microchip manufacturers followed suit. With a shortage of new cars hitting the market in 2020, consumers started to use their stimulus checks and took advantage of low-interest rates to purchase used cars instead, driving up prices four times faster than the growth seen in the inventory of new cars. “The perfect storm of supply and demand created a temporary and unsustainable spike in used car prices, says Motley Fool’s analyst Sean Williams. A huge bubble was formed, but a reckoning has just arrived.
The repercussions of the car market collapse can throw the entire country in disarray. We must consider that the U.S. car industry is a significant contributor to the country's economy, accounting for millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue. A crash in this market can result in a significant economic downturn, leading to widespread job losses, bankruptcies, and a sharp decline in consumer spending. It can also disrupt the supply chain for many other industries. Given that car manufacturers rely on a vast network of suppliers to produce their vehicles, when the crash finally occurs, it will trigger a domino effect on these suppliers, leading to mass disruption in many sectors. When Musk says this could turn into a financial nightmare, he isn't bluffing. We should all pay very close attention to the next developments of this crisis because it will ultimately impact all of us. That’s why in today’s video, we compiled several facts that prove that the U.S. auto market is in huge trouble.
Consumer Sentiment Cracks: First Drop in Four Months Getty Images/praetorianphoto 1:48
Consumer sentiment unexpectedly worsened in March as worries over a looming recession took hold.
The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment fell to 62.0 in March from 67 in February, an eight percent decline. Compared with a year ago, the index is down four percent.
The midmonth preliminary reading came in at 63.4, so the final number indicates that sentiment continued to deteriorate as March progressed. Economists had expected the final March reading to more or less hold steady with the mid-month score.
Surprisingly, it was not the banking crisis that depressed consumer sentiment.
“This month’s turmoil in the banking sector had limited impact on consumer sentiment, which was already exhibiting downward momentum prior to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Overall, our data revealed multiple signs that consumers increasingly expect a recession ahead,” said Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey.
There were steep declines in both the assessment of current conditions and expectations for the future.
“While sentiment fell across all demographic groups, the declines were sharpest for lower-income, less-educated, and younger consumers, as well as consumers with the top tercile of stock holdings. All five index components declined this month, led by a notably sharp weakening in one-year business conditions,” Hsu said.
Year-ahead inflation expectations fell from 4.1 percent in February to 3.6 percent, the lowest reading since April 2021. Long-run inflation expectations came in at 2.9 percent for the fourth consecutive month.
A large number of Walmart stores are set to close down permanently next month as conditions continue to deteriorate for U.S. grocers. The biggest retailer in the world hasn’t been immune from the devastating effects of the retail apocalypse, and now several locations that have served their communities for years are about to disappear. Believe it or not, the top retail chain is reporting lagging sales growth and a myriad of challenges that include wage and consumer inflation and declining demand. The outlook is very grim, and many other big U.S. grocery chains are following Walmart’s move and shuttering multiple locations to survive the perfect storm that has already begun.
According to The U.S. Sun, over a hundred locations are on the chopping block due to “poor sales performance”. On top of that, the retail giant has decided to put an end to its nine-year experiment with pick-up-only locations and confirmed it would lay off thousands of workers at its e-commerce fulfillment centers across the country.Moreover, in a recent interview with Fox News, the former Walmart CEO pointed to several reasons why the company was struggling and warned Americans about the “detrimental impact that mass layoffs could have on the U.S.'s feeble economy.”
"It's crazy right now. We're stuck in this loop of wage inflation, product inflation, and cost inflation. And it's just that cycle keeps going. And I think, unfortunately, an inevitable byproduct of some of the Fed's moves during the pandemic,” said Bill Simon, who left his position as Walmart’s chief executive officer in 2014. Walmart has already informed investors that it expects sales growth to significantly slow down, especially in the second half of this year. On Tuesday, Walmart forecasted net sales growth of 2.5% for the current fiscal year, well below Wall Street’s prediction for a 3.3% increase. It expects adjusted earnings in a range between $5.90 per share for 2024, missing analysts’ forecast of $6.50.
Refinitiv data shows that this would mark the weakest sales growth for the retailer since its 2010 fiscal year, and the first drop in annual earnings since fiscal 2009. But Walmart is far from the only large retailer that is facing closure as sales decline. As a perfect storm of events hits food supply chains, several grocery stores nationwide are also shutting down. A new report by Best Life reveals that dozens of Winn-Dixie stores are closing right now. A spokesperson for Southeastern Grocers Inc., Winn-Dixie's parent company, called the decision to close "difficult." "While we understand that closing stores will impact local communities, we want to assure you this decision was not made lightly," the spokesperson said.
Moreover, so far this year 6 Lucky supermarkets have been shuttered. And another one is on the chopping block this month after 40 years in business. In February, Green Zebra, a grocery chain that earned the love of loyal customers all across Portland, Oregon went bankrupt. The niche grocery market was known for its healthier meals, but unfortunately, the chain went under and is now closing all of its current locations. The goodbye occurs after 10 years in business.
The shutdown of so many stores is not only affecting the bottom lines of businesses but also leading to a surge in unemployment and higher prices, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to afford the basic necessities of life. Local communities are also feeling the impact, as empty storefronts and vacant malls have become the new norm. We must wake up to the fact that the retail apocalypse is not just a temporary setback but a long-term crisis that requires immediate actio
