Tag: chair

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Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Was Totally Predictable

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An interesting segment on CNN’s Outfront w/ErinBurnett(03/16/23 )revealed that five months ago, renowned Economist Douglas Diamond, who won a Nobel Prize for his research in bank runs, predicted, even warned, that banks would go under if the federal reserve kept raising interest rates. This of course means that the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank(SVB), and the ripple effect it has caused around the banking world, were totally foreseeable. Host Erin Burnett rightly wondered why nobody at the fed heeded warnings from this esteemed economist known for his work on bank runs?

Douglas Diamond specifically told host Erin Burnett when asked whether he was surprised by the collapse of SVB(1:21): “I’m actually quite surprised. I realized that they[interest rate hikes]could wreak havoc, and I assumed that the supervisors–the Fed, FDIC, control of the currency–would have carefully looked at the balance sheets of all these banks and made sure that they would have been resilient, could have made it through this huge interest rate increase. So clearly from the Silicon Valley National Bank and First Republic, it’s pretty much the interest rate increases that caused their problems, so I’m surprised that we got here, and I would have thought that either the Fed would have slowed interest rate increases a bit, or even better, made sure these banks were stable so they could increase them to fight inflation.”

More importantly, Douglas Diamond pointed out that this was not a problem caused by lack of adequate banking regulations, but rather, just a failure of supervision. He specifically told host Erin Burnett(3:30): “Within the existing laws, the supervisors and regulators could have done a thousand times better.”

Bottom line folks, the collapse of SVB and its ripple effects, were totally foreseeable. The Biden administration is justified in extending generous bailouts to affected banks in an effort to prevent a “contagion” from SVB. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the wisdom of extending generous bailouts to struggling banks who made bad financial decisions. What we must not disagree about however, is that the supervisors and regulators, whose job it was to prevent this totally foreseeable crisis, must be held to account–beginning with Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

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Rep Liz Cheney All But Admits Trump Committed Crimes Re January 6th Insurrection

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Rep Liz Cheney(R-WY) appeared on CNN’s State of The Union show (04/10/22) where she all but admitted that the evidence currently in possession of the January6th Committee, would support a finding that former President Trump engaged in criminal conduct as related to the January 6th insurrection. Even though Rep Liz Cheney is limited as to what she can disclose publicly, given her position as Vice Chair of the January 6th Committee, there is no question that her response to host Jake Tapper’s question as to whether she believed Trump’s conduct was criminal, was a resounding yes.

Host Jake Tapper(video at 7:07 onwards):“You are the Vice Chair of the January 6th Committee. The New York Times is reporting this morning that your committee has concluded that you have enough evidence to make a criminal referral for President Trump to the Justice Department for obstructing an official proceeding and for conspiracy to defraud the United States. Is that true, do you have enough evidence to refer Trump for criminal charges?”

Rep Liz Cheney: “We have not made a decision about referrals on the committee. I think that it is absolutely the case, it’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful, they did it anyway. I think you certainly saw that in the decision that was issued by Judge Carter a few weeks ago, where he concluded that it was more likely than not that the President of the United States was engaged in criminal activity. I think what we have seen is a massive and well organized and well planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election. You’ve seen just in the last few days a plea agreement from one of the leaders of the Proud Boys which lays out in really chilling detail the extent to which violence was planned, the extent to which the message that went out on December 19th about the rally in Washington–and don’t forget Donald Trump tweeted out that message ‘be there, be wild’–that the day after that message, the organization and the planning started, and that they understood that they were going to attempt to use violence to try to stop the transfer of power. That is the definition of an insurrection and it is absolutely chilling.”

There is no other way to interpret Rep Cheney’s remarks other than, former President Trump, and his insurrectionists planned, and understood very clearly that on January 6th, they were going to use violence to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral college victory, and that this conduct fits both of the criminal schemes pointed out by host Jake Tapper.

Bottom line the only question remaining now is whether (1) the January 6th Committee will make that criminal referral and (2) whether Garland’s DOJ will act on it. It cannot be left unsaid that if the January 6th Committee were to make a criminal referral against former President Trump, and Garland’s DOJ chose not to act on it, this will represent one of the biggest failures of the U.S. Justice department in modern DOJ history. It will essentially cement the running perception that Trump is for all intents and purposes, above the law– a sad state of affairs indeed.

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