Crooked Media - What A Day: Sting like an SVB

Is it just me, or is it starting to feel a little 2008 in here? 

• The Federal Reserve announced Monday that it will review its supervision of Silicon Valley Bank after it collapsed over the weekend in the second-largest American bank failure on record. SVB crashed after a bank run (when a larger portion of clients withdraw money at the same time because they believe the bank is in danger of failing), and now the government is pulling emergency levers to backstop uninsured depositors, and President Biden is assuring Americans that the money they keep in the nation’s other banks is safe. 

• SVB was the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual went under in 2008. So what the hell happened? SVB held assets for a thick slice of the tech and startup industry, as its name would suggest. It also invested its holdings in long-term bonds, as if it anticipated years of extremely low short-term rates would continue forever. But the tech sector has had a rocky few months full of extensive layoffs, just as the rest of the economy was running hot, and the Fed was raising rates. Many of SVB’s clients thus needed more cash over the past year than before, so they began withdrawing their deposits, forcing the bank to sell a large portion of its bonds at a considerable loss. As word of the impending emergency spread, more clients withdrew their deposits, and there’s the run. 

• On Sunday, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation collectively decided to guarantee all deposits at SVB as well as New York’s Signature Bank, which was also seized on Sunday. That is—the regulators guaranteed all deposits above and beyond the $250,000 limit on insured deposits. Student loan borrowers and people with medical debt everywhere are saying: “How do we get some of that??” All three agencies and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen moved quickly to assure Americans that “no losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.”

Okay great, we’re all feeling very confident!!
 

• If there’s one person we can count on to be hopping mad about a banking issue, it’s Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and boy is she. Warren wrote an op-ed for the New York Times and laid the blame for this most recent bank failure directly at the feet of “leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules.” After the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which was aimed at improving accountability and transparency in the American financial system and rein in the “too big to fail” banks. Obviously, Wall Street hated this law and wanted its unlimited runway back as soon as possible. It spent millions of dollars lobbying the FDIC and Congress trying to defeat it, and then when that failed, trying to weaken it. In fact, two former senior aides to House Speaker Mr. “No blank checks” Kevin McCarthy went on to become SVB’s top lobbyists in this effort. McCarthy himself and countless other Republican lawmakers pushed for the repeal of significant pieces of Dodd-Frank. Disgraced former president Donald Trump signed a partial repeal of Dodd-Frank into law in 2018. (This astute cartoon captures the origins of multiple recent national crises in a single cell.)

• Yellen also went on to assert that this is “not a bailout” but it certainly walks and talks like a bailout! Bank stocks around the world plunged today, losing about $90 billion in value, even as President Biden pledged to take any actions needed to ensure the safety of the U.S. banking system following the emergency measures deployed by the nation’s fiduciary institutions. The strong measures are meant to restore confidence and prevent further banking failures, but it’s not entirely guaranteed. 

So what have we learned since 2008? Not enough, apparently! Silicon Valley Bank was poorly supervised thanks to regulatory rollbacks, and employed a risky strategy that maximized short-term profits but made it vulnerable to this exact scenario. Just like in 2008, we watched SVB hand out bonuses to their executives mere hours before the government takeover. How many times will we have to watch the economy brought to the brink of collapse by greedy, nefarious financial actors before elected officials understand that deregulation will always end in disaster?

Congratulations to Hysteria for being featured in Amazon Music’s Women in Podcasting collection. Throughout Women’s History Month, this collection  shines a light on the women doing the work to break barriers and recognizes the women in podcasting that have made an impact on society, history, entertainment and beyond.


Each week on Hysteria, Political commentator and comedy writer Erin Ryan and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco are joined by a bicoastal squad of funny, opinionated women to talk through everything from reproductive rights to rom-coms to the cultural stories that are affecting women’s lives. 


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Trump-appointed federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has been on a tear during the Biden administration, knocking down workplace protections for transgender Americans, agreeing to hear a case brought by anti-vaxxers against major news organizations for not publishing anti-vaxx misinformation, and ruling against the Biden administration on immigration in cases so shoddy even the ultraconservative Supreme Court picked his work apart. His reputation for right-wing hackery has driven many hackish right-wing organizations to file lawsuits specifically in his district, anticipating friendly rulings from Kacsmaryk, then a review from the similarly right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the conservative majority in the Supreme Court. That’s exactly what an anti-abortion group did when it decided to challenge the FDA’s approval of the abortion medication mifepristone,…20 years after the fact. Experts expected Kacsmaryk to side with the anti-abortion groups no matter what, and then . But weeks after the last briefs were submitted, he still hasn’t ruled, and it appears that he is conducting his review more or less in secret. After being accused of this secrecy, Kacsmaryk ordered oral arguments in the case to take place on Wednesday morning, according to a new court filing. The FDA has strongly disputed the anti-abortion group’s claims and argued that pulling mifepristone from the market should its approval be nullified would not only put women’s health at risk, it would also weaken the FDA’s authority. Mifepristone is used in about half of all U.S. abortions.

After signing the single-largest piece of climate legislation in American history, the Biden administration is planning to wave through a mammoth $8 billion oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska. Not great! 

Speaking of climate change, the head of the United Nations today called for scientists to deliver “cold, hard facts” in order to spur governments to make substantive policies to curb the damage before the point of no return. In defense of the scientists, they’re the ones who have been holding up their end of the deal!

The International Criminal Court plans to seek criminal arrests of Russian officials who forcibly deported children from Ukraine and targeted civilian infrastructure, the first ICC case involving Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

U.S. Treasury Department and Justice Department officials are seeking new ways to liquidate the assets of Russian oligarchs. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence issued his harshest criticism of disgraced former president Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, saying that he “was wrong,” to try to overturn the election (you think??) and that “his reckless words endangered my family…” He nevertheless refused to testify before the House January 6 Committee and has challenged a subpoena to testify before the grand jury investigating Trump’s role in January 6.

The Colorado state Republican Party selected rabid election denier, former state representative Dave Williams, as its new leader this weekend. 

State lawmakers in Nevada may allow the water agency that manages the Colorado River supply for Las Vegas to drastically limit residential water use. The good news is, we may finally see a crackdown on the ultra-wealthy for their overuse of water! Stop trying to have a lawn in the desert you freaks!!

Speaking of disgraced former president Trump, he does not plan to testify in the New York State grand jury investigation into his “alleged” (wink) hush money compensation to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. 

Fox News has had a rough couple of weeks (haha!) thanks to revelations from a defamation lawsuit brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems. But an even bigger lawsuit against Fox is looming. Fox’s efforts to get the case dismissed have thus far not been successful. Smartmatic claims Fox hosts and guests made over 100 false statements regarding the 2020 election (seems like a conservative estimate!) and that Fox falsely claimed Smartmatic was involved in tallying 2020 election results in six battleground states. Fox also alleged that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when the two companies are in fact rivals and have no communication with each other. Probably the wildest claim Fox made is that Smartmatic was founded in Venezuela, sanctioned by corrupt dictators, when the company was actually founded in Boca Raton, FL, in 2000 in the wake of the “hanging chad” nightmare, aimed at using technology to restore the public’s faith in election results. Imagine that.

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Everything Everywhere All At Once cleaned the hell up at the Oscars, winning three acting awards, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Damn, Daniels!
 

Michelle Yeoh became only the second woman of color and first Asian woman to win Best Actress. 


An Illinois man is suing Buffalo Wild Wings because he claims the “boneless wings” are just chicken nuggets. The American dream is alive and well in our nation’s courtrooms!!