Americans have been told a dangerous and uncertain world requires stronger managers and less freedom, but the decline of civil liberties is what started this mess
Look what they do in banking. My dad said it best - “This isn’t capitalism. In bailing out SVB, after first lying about it, they’ve cemented ensuring profits are private and losses are socialized.” It can’t surprise you they also think freedom of speech is whatever the Brandon administration says is ok and everyone who complains is a domestic terrorist.
It’s klepto-corporate multinational globalist technocracy. A caste system of two classes. The Uber-rich and powerful and the working poor. The middle class has been gutted and otherwise healthy, able bodied people are encouraged not to work. The endgame is to create a nation of government dependency and ownership. That’s when the fun begins. And freedom ends.
That's what Piketty said in CAPITAL a decade ago. Add the Victor Davis Hanson admonition that a healthy citizenship and a thriving middle class is necessary for a Republic to survive. Napoleon observed that financier's have no allegiance to country at all (though they love wrapping themselves in the flag). I'm finding that thinking of America as the Constitutional Republic it is rather than as a Democracy grounds my frame of reference, lessens my sense of vitriol and allows me a little objectivity.
They aren’t bailing out SVB, but it isn’t clear who is providing the money to cover deposits. It also isn’t clear who talked and set off the bank run before SVB could quietly raise the capital to cover its bond portfolio losses. Did someone make a nice profit shorting SVB stock? The share holders are now SOL, but that’s what happens when you gamble, I mean invest in the stock market.
They are bailing out SVB. They announced a special assessment on other banks - which is passed along to all of us in the form of higher fees and interest rates. SVB incompetence set off the run. Rather than normal bond ladders high schoolers can grasp, they invested their reserves in long term fed funds and mortgage backed securities in 2021 despite inflation and the feds making clear they’d raise rates to address it. SVB just held the damn things as they tanked. Then a funding round flopped and they had to sell below par because interest rates have been rising for over a year. Depositors ran on the bank because it was being run by incompetent people. It is absolutely a bail out.
All true but I am not persuaded that depositors should be wiped out. If a business cannot make payroll, who suffers the most?
I will watch for administrative and criminal proceedings against the SVB board and senior officers. Notoriously, nobody responsible for the bank and insurance failures of 2007-10 ever stood trial or even suffered a meaningful administrative penalty, like a lifetime ban from any position in the finance industry, and Obama bragged about that.
We have seen time and again, that financial harm to the businesses means nothing to the psychopaths who run them. Even the loss of their future stock options leaves them far richer than 99% of the population. It is time to put them in prison and leave their families impoverished. Maybe that will change some behaviors.
And, to be clear, a5 years of the Fed suppressing interest rates led banks like SVB into investments far too risky for a public bank. Then, the incredible federal deficits under Biden set the stage for the inflation that led the Feds to jack up interest rates, which in turn reduced the value of the securities SVB held, making them potentially insolvent. All those government officials are no doubt beyond reach, but it is important that they be shamed and their reputations ruined... won't happen, but justice does demand no less.
Depositors would not have been wiped out. They would have gotten $0.85-$0.90 on the dollar over $250K. If you don’t let business fail when their is incompetence, and people fe we l that, you get more incompetence. The people in Ohio can’t even get water filters for their houses. If this has been a bank for regular people and normal small businesses there would be no “you get your cash back.” This is cementing a 2-tiered system. Government spending is so massive the government pucks winners and losers. Now regulators are picking who is immune from poor decisions. It’s sick.
I think you might want to check your arithmetic. According to this morning's Wall Street Journal, at the end of 2022, SVB had $157 billion in deposits on their books from approximately 37,000 depositors. That works out to on average over $4 million per depositor. Where was the other 80%+ going to come from after the FDIC chips in their $250K guarantee? Most of the depositors would have gotten CRUSHED had Mr. Taxpayer not stepped in to bail them out AGAIN. Same circus - different clowns.
Who keeps over $250k in a bank account? My guess is that it's people who have LOTS of money, i.e., those who can afford to lose $25k-$40k without a second thought.
Depositors are never wiped out. We have a system for failed banks. The bank is seized. Insured deposits, up to $250K, are immediately available. The banks is sold or the bank assets are liquidated. Uninsured deposits are then repaid, to the extent possible. In this case, Yellen is ignoring the $250K limit and simply printing money to make billionaires whole.
Assuming no intervention, assuming things work as pre-determined by current regs and policies, then Silicon Valley is gutted, we lose a lot of tech companies that help keep us competitive in the world, and by mid-week, Regional Banks across the USA are failing.
Distinguish between depositors and bank executives and shareholders, and politicians. The latter set up an environment conducive for failure with COVID lockdowns, inflationary policies, and negligent regulation. The bank was negligent, invested in way too many long-term Treasuries and not recognizing the impact of the tightening tech investment climate. The depositors are victims. If we punish them, pretty much every business reacts by moving their funds to CitiBank, Chase, and BankOfAmeria because they are too big to fail.
And for Little Tech, waiting a year to make them whole is not an option. The climate for VC's to invest in small tech is dried up. Nobody is giving new lines of credit to little tech in 2023. They will just die.
There are something like 40,000 depositors and I doubt most of them are billionaires--a lot of small and medium sized businesses using the bank primarily as a checking account, maybe a line of credit for business cash-flow purposes. and if they are limited to $250K FDIC insurance a lot of them will be wiped out and their employees and vendors will not be paid.
And I doubt if many billionaires have a large part of their holdings in bank CDs, anyway. I mean, really!!
Yes, there is no literal "wipe out," but if you are running a business with a monthly churn of a couple of million dollars, $250K doesn't do much. to keep you afloat.
This is a difficult problem, if depositors are not made whole regional banks will all fail and people and businesses will only do business with the huge, systemically important (too big to fail) banks, and personally, I don't want to see banking concentrated in a small oligopoly.
There is no perfect answer, but something along the lines of more generous FDIC coverage coupled with limitations on what banks can invest in (i.e., not highly speculative, volatile stuff like mortgage backed securities) would be a step in the right direction.
And, some prosecutions and clawbacks, both as simple justice and "pour encourager les autres," as Voltaire described the execution of Admiral Byng as an example to other admirals.
SVB was paying 5.48% on Deposits. I did not know this until yesterday, but now I remain more convinced the depositors don’t deserve a bail-out.The rest of us, getting well under a 1% on deposits at responsible banks that responsibly hedged their rate risk, are now footing the bill for the downside risks of deposits with a 5.48% return. That is wrong and is nothing more than reallocation of wealth to rich Silicon Valley tech companies.
Was that 5.48% on 60 month CDs or checking accounts? If on the former, given what the Fed has been doing, not a big deal, 2yr Treasury Notes have been around 4.5%. If on demand deposits then yeah, that is a real problem, tho I still worry about employees and vendors getting stiffed.
I am encouraged to see people suing these banks and their executives, and hope to see aggressive action from the regulators. The people responsible need to suffer real harm. Maybe some depositors deserve a haircut. But the employees and suppliers to those depositors not being paid for work already done or materials or services already provided? I don’t see that.
Depositors, yes, but their employees? And suppliers? and the suppliers' suppliers? Is it reasonable to have the supplier to a supplier to a supplier vet the bank that the final customer uses? All the banks that all its customers use?
This is a fundamental problem with fractional reserve banking and won't go away, but we can make things better or worse. If I had my way we would go back to separating deposit-taking banks from investment banks, with the former tightly regulated almost like public utilities, and with robust insurance, and the latter only lightly regulated to address fraud, but no insurance at all, by law.
I would also reconsider mark-to-market, a cure for a real problem (misleading, even fraudulent accounting for assets) but worse than the disease. Mark-to-market is misleading in all cases other than imminent liquidation... the bonds will pay the income stream and repay principal as guaranteed, regardless of what interest rate swings may do to their present value. This happened in 2007-08 and again last week---M2M creates an appearance of insolvency when there is none, and that sets off a panic. I would not go back to the previous system, but M2M has created catastrophes. We need a better way.
We seem to have forgotten what Walter Bagehot knew in the 1870s---when a bank is in trouble, you should investigate its assets and liabilities. If it is solvent but temporarily illiquid, loan it what it needs to survive, at a high rate of interest, with the interest being incentive to not get into that sort of situation in the future.. If it is truly insolvent, let it die.
It would have been better to take a couple of days to go over the books and figure out whether the bank was worth saving, or not, and if not, to figure out to what extent liquidation would cover depositors. It may be that even in liquidation the uninsured depositors would have seen 80% or more in a couple of weeks, in which case I would be much more amenable to no govt intervention beyond the FDIC insurance limit and overseeing an orderly shut-down and liquidation.
I cannot know for sure, but I suspect that SVB was neither illiquid nor really insolvent at the end of February, but the M2M value of its assets, reduced more than they expected due to the Fed raising interest rates faster than they expected, to fight inflation, created the appearance of possible insolvency, which led to a run. At that point, the panic has a life of its own.
Why the only way we can fight price increases is to trash the economy and destroy jobs and businesses, is a question for another day.
America's best and brightest...from Sand Hill Rd even. I've been to Sand Hill Rd. Pitched VCs on Sand Hill Rd. They are the cream of the crop. The top layer. The creme de la creme. Is it hubris or...what was/is this? I mean, the Chief Investment Officer went to Harvard, right?
It's sad that Harvard and the other Ivys still show up so high in national and world rankings. Then again, maybe it's not so surprising since the people doing the ranking are Ivy grads themselves.
Deposits are insured up to 250k. Or are they? It’s Silicon Valley. Rich depositors are being made whole....by us. Now if it were Oklahoma Farmers Bank....
It is most certainly is a bailout. Yellen is printing any money necessary, which is a cute way of making taxpayers responsible for billionaire losses. Depositors were mainly Valley billionaires and 9 figure VCs, that ran their money thru startups. The notion they didn't realize FDIC insurance limits were $250K is laughable. What they knew, is that the rules never apply to them and that Dems would bail them out of any unfortunate outcomes, resulting from bad business decisions. Private profits and nationalized losses, should be the Dem 2024 slogan.
there is an argument for protecting depositors, irrespective of who the depositors are. I am aware of folks whose business were not large but did all their banking with SVB. Which means they lost their LOC too. So its not all rich VC. Also, those rich folks likely would not lose their deposits though they would be locked up for some time as the assets were sold off and possibly subject to a haircut.
Who do you think owns those small businesses? FDIC limits exist because we cannot charge enough premiums to banks, to insure every dime banked in the US. US banking law had a system that worked well for failed banks. Banks are seized. Immediately every depositor has access up to $250K. The bank is sold or assets are sold, and from those proceeds, uninsured deposits are paid, to the extent possible. That is gone, blown to shreds without a vote in Congress. When a bank in Iowa fails, are farmers with a million bucks in deposits going to take their $250K and wait? Or are farmers in Iowa expected to wait, because they are not as important as the Silicon Valley geniuses that ran the 16th largest US bank for 8 months, without a risk manager?
The last comment i one I have made in other places, though SVB was doing a "bang up job" on climate and social issues, they seem to have relegated their primary responsibility to the third team. (I for one am scared about getting on a United airlines plane for the first time in my life based on their "do good" campaign. I prefer they focus on getting me where I am going safely and on time. If they are as "successful" in their goal as SVB, a lot of people are going to die.)
You make a fair point and many of my friends feel the same way. I do think from a depositors side, it is more complicated for some but My contention in this thread is blaming the depositors is misguided. wE know who is to blame here and I strongly suspect they will cry all the way to the (SIB) bank.
This is the bank that lobbied to remove the regulations that would've saved them from exactly this kind of collapse. I have zero sympathy for them. Most of their depositors are Silicon Valley startups that should've been smart enough to keep their payroll in a bank that didn't engage in the extreme gambling this bank did. Those startups' founders got sweetheart mortgage loans from SVB to keep their payroll with SVB. Screw them. They should face the music for their bad business decisions. Bailing out these depositors will be disastrous for our democracy. Tea Party #2 is waiting in the wings.
First, I am all for clawing back any gains from the management team that were made in the last x years. My worst fear in all of this is there will be no punishment for poor management and the moral hazard will continue. And that is important because this was not gambling, it was incompetence. There is a difference. This was a failure to match their duration risk. And i doubt the regulators would catch that as I do not think they are any smarter than the guys at SVB.
This is a problem that every bank is dealing with due to interest rate increases and we will see which banks had crap risk management and which ones were competent. And please don't tell me that you saw this coming as you would be buying your yacht right now, not commenting on this forum. So do not blame the depositors because they did not see it coming as SVB had a sterling reputation, maybe unearned, but there was no due diligence to perform. The moral hazard issue is important and should be dealt with as such, but assigning guilt on the depositors is not the way to address this.
They did bail out SVB and signature. This is not about portfolio loss it’s about duration and the fact that no one at SVB understood that while taking in millions in bonuses is telling
The losses on the mortgages are big, but I'm curious how the losses in their loan portfolio look after using wokeness and DEI as funding criteria. I bet that could have blown up the bank even without the awful bet on mortgages.
i doubt it. This was duration problem. I think the fact that they bought MBS can be misleading. The fact is their long protfolio was mismatched with their short portfolio. The upshot is that for the last 10+ years every member of the Fed and the gov (R and D) has ignored the threat of inflation. COVID policies were the last straw. But instead of doing something they tried to wish it away by calling it transitory. when the Fed finally had to raise, the banks, despite years of warning and history from the 80's got caught flat footed. I suspect because they were too busy fighting racism and climate change to pay attention to risk management (eg their most important job.)
An article in the Wall Street Journal tonight stated that it's being funded by an inter Bank fund and a special program put together with the fed. Whatever that means!
SVB couldn't quietly raise the capital it needed because it is upside-down in all its Treasury investments and lacked collateral to secure additional financing. So the bonds are worth less than they paid (see also, 'unrealized losses') and the bank just doesn't possess assets to cover its liabilities - the depositors. So it's a toxic investment for other banks to buy into. Banks reinvest deposits to make money (that has to be a reasonably sound investment) and it doesn't always work. Bonds are thought to be one of the most secure assets, but core inflation and interest rate hikes gutted their return. So they invested $10 in bonds and now they're worth 6.
SVB is guilty of under-diversifying, over-leveraging what they had, and making stupid, rookie investment decisions. this wasn't a stock market thing at all, it was a financial incompetence thing. Highly recommend Patrick Boyle on YT to help sort things out.
What about the nice return depositors at SVB got - 5.48% on deposits while those of us footing the bill for the bailout via higher fees and rates get like 0.18% from the banks that are responsible in hedging their interest rate risk and will actually do business with us? How are we not bailing out the downside risk to essentially an investment for these people with a guaranteed return of 5.48% annually? What other group, and in what other circumstances, could anyone else access a 5.48% return for the last 2 years with a risk free backstop from loss? How is it not a bailout to ensure insane returns of 5.48% on bank deposits for billionaires and failing tech startups?
Yes, it’s clearly a bailout no matter what the government and MSM are calling it. SVB board and executives should be held accountable for their incompetence, but I doubt that will ever happen. And now we have the new “Bank Term Funding Program” (BTFP) ...
I was not aware of that. If that is correct it puts the onus on the depositors as anyone would know that those are not the returns of a FDIC insured account.
Your comment is the most telling of them all. It seems that the Democrats have become so dysfunctional in thought and expression they’re driving the “children” they claim to care so much about into the arms of their “enemy.”
When dysfunction becomes too extreme people run, as far as possible, away from it.
It’s weird, Biden and Fauci and Joe Paterno strike me as having a few things in common. It’s like the regular world is anathema to them. The coach once was quoted as saying why would he retire and do what - mow grass? Entitled ppl have a plan of the future and never let reality get in the way. That’s when they get into trouble - eventually. Some don’t
Of course it is, and I found him to be a sympathetic character in this circus (I'm neither R nor D). But if the tables were turned I can imagine Jordan not getting so fired up about the issue. Like I said, I could be wrong—maybe Jordan is a true civil libertarian and free speech warrior. But he strikes me as being more of a savvy political operator than a true idealist.
I think the point is that we have never ever ever had a group of people destroying civil liberties as ruthlessly as the current leadership. No one I know can remember anything like this happening before. It makes no sense to ask what Jim Jordan would do if rolls were reversed. I don’t think he would ever let things get this evil to begin with. This is one side of the political aisle who have crossed a line that has never been crossed before.
Yes, as a former Democrat myself, whole damn scene is unbelievable, isn’t it? My old friends (in DC) are now my enemies, and my old enemies my new friends.
Most of the psyop is the distortion and manipulation of reality to create extreme emotion, projection and loss of objectivity. There are no facts only accusation's (as demonstrated in the hearing). Knee-jerk is a disease I'm trying to recover from.
Tucker is a man with a rigid moral compass. Many don’t like the way it points, but he is firm on his direction. Everyone forgets that he describes himself as a libertarian first. Personally, I’d love to see Matt team up with Tucker on the J6 videos. I trust Matt to tell us in a different way the good, bad, and ugly.
Look up how Tucker sent emails to Hunter Biden toadying up for help with getting one of his kids into school. He's a fraud like the rest of them; he just plays a different assigned role in The Show.
It's all bullshit. There's no R and there's no D, except for a few genuine little small potatoes here and there who are either too dumb or too valiant to realize it's all stage lights and greasepaint. There's Them and there's Us. That's it.
While it may be true that Tucker and Hunter are both part of the same club, there is still some difference of opinion among members of the Club. For example, Tucker genuinely does disapprove of the open borders policy and has been a vocal critic for many years. He has also been a critical of our nonstop foreign interventions, and he is one of the few journalists other than Matt who has had anything bad to say out the vulture capitalists eating this country alive. I really do believe that very few people other than Tucker could have done the segment of Cabela's and Paul Singer without getting taken off the air. The only reason Tucker hasn't been removed from his platform is precisely because he's one of Them. And so while you are certainly right to question his motives and take everything he says with a grain of salt, he is still a rare and valuable dissenting voice among the elites.
That is precisely why I get my news from Matt. I get that Tucker is part of big media, but he does have issues that he will present accurately and with fervor. But he freely admits that he is an opinion guy--a commentator. I absolutely love Tucker's interviews and specials. He asks the questions that I want asked. But! All that said, I get my news from guys like Matt.
The Twitter files wouldn't have happened without subscription journalism and the Republican's are at least politically malleable right now. The psyop (MSM/surveillance state/criminal finance) talks over the top of us and openly lies because they can get away with it. The more truth we speak the more light shines on the lie. There is a huge change factor in that.
So he tried to help his kid and that negates all of the research, evidence and videos he has shown? I think you may be missing the forest for the trees. I’m not a Tucker fan, but I’m a truth fan. And as far as main stream media goes there’s hardly a shred of it besides Carlson.
My thought. Like the Taibbi Twitter files the J/6 footage needs to go to review and report by a qualified unbiased journalist. Not because of any left/right concern but because you and I deserve the truth. The DNC/surveillance state willingness to openly lie reveals how pathologically vicious they are.
He trafficked in evil for craven personal gain. There is no other way to interpret that action. There is no fucking school in the world that is worth groveling for favors from that shitstain Hunter Biden and anyone who "help[s] his kid" by trying to implant said kid deeper in to the rotting carcass that is the elite power structure in this country has demonstrated that he is a corrupt liar obviously hoovering up the bucks to tell the rubes what they want to hear.
Anyone who spends his days looking at what Tucker Carlson looks at and doesn't conclude that the best place for his family is a dairy farm in Iowa, not anywhere within a thousand miles of anywhere that Hunter Biden's influence is a plus, is one of them. This is not hard to figure out.
Learn to live without trying to find heroes, is my advice. No one is coming to save you. It's up to you.
I agree (with a suggestion). "Us" are the citizen's of the American Constitutional Republic. We're not capitalist, communist or DNC/RNC hack's. We are free and responsible citizen's of the Republic.
Maybe my memory is faulty because I was pretty liberal back in the 00s, but I remember despising Tucker during the Bush II era. That was bowtie Tucker. I should go back and watch some of his stuff from back then.
he hasn't changed. He described himself as a libertarian. I see why when I hear his rants on freedom of speech and corrupt government. he and I share the same roots. Most think me a conservative. I identify as conservative. Truth be told, I am a strict constructionist of our constitution. I guess that is conservative in a way.
For real. A few years ago I'm not sure if I would have slowed down for him in a crosswalk. Now he's the only MSM person speaking Truth. Upside down world.
They have shown their true color and it isn’t red, white and blue or anything resembling blue. It is black. Not as in racial identity, but as in soulless.
The hearings of the past few days should leave no doubt. The despicable attacking of Matt and Shellenberger, Nicholas Wade, the young man who’d written a book about the necessity for nuclear energy and fossil fuels until there is something proven more effective and available… accused of racism, collusion, shilling for Putin… I was sickened and frightened. It was obscene.
I think what we're viewing is pathological not political. I'm saying this because of the damage I'm witnessing around me and the inability of American elected political leadership to acknowledge and address it.
It’s called “walking away.” I left the Democratic party circa 2015.
I used to read the LA Times, NYT, and Wall Street Journal every day. I occasionally still read the WSJ, but not so much.
It is really eye-opening to listen to the source yourself, and then read the reporting on it later on these publications. Unbelievable the lies and spinned narratives that are “reported” as FACT... it was and still is shocking to me the lies that we are regularly told.
I get my news, now, from substack writers, Rumble videos, Real America’s Voice (I especially like Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Wayne Allyn Root), and Tucker Carlson (the rest of Fox News is just... “outrage” culture and garbage as far as I am concerned).
Welcome this thing we call honest reality. Where, yeah, it's appropriate to discipline your children, teach them right from wrong, and call out the union loving Uber libs that think otherwise. I like to call it conservatism.
Me, too, Blake. Voted Dem for 30 years and even campaigned for them. I’ll never forgive them for embracing censorship, authoritarianism, and becoming the party of warmongering elites. This whole experience has made me question all of my principles, everything I held as true.
The Democrats have put me in a position to side with Franklin Graham… and I’m Jewish, albeit not terribly devout in practice, socially liberal in the classic sense and during my time volunteering at the Dali’ Museum became the infamous “ Indecent Docent”.
Whatever the once Democrats call themselves, they are no longer recognizable as anything American. They have “ transitioned” into a tyrannical, illiberal, racist, antisemitic, anti-free speech, anti-freedom, anti-civil liberties, anti-Constitutional, pro-surveillance,pro-war,,violent,lawless,savage,intolerant Cult of Hatred For All Things Living
Matt Stoller wrote about this yesterday. As a reporter who focuses almost exclusively on antitrust issues, Stoller's viewpoint is that "Jim Jordan has been a foe of antitrust action against big tech and government action to regulate dominant firms for years."
Stoller can get way too full of himself at times, but he is right on Jordan. I think the most telling is how much Ken Buck cannot stand Jordan for derailing his antitrust efforts.
Agreed, Stoller's style can come across as arrogant and condescending. But I generally trust his judgment on antitrust matters.
On a related note, yesterday Stoller also strongly dismissed the "chilling" nature of the FTC's request for reporters' names from Twitter. He said this was business as usual for the FTC since they had worked out a consent decree with Twitter years ago regarding their playing fast and loose with user data. It wasn't clear to me that the Twitter Files were relevant to this specific abuse at all, and when a commenter called him out on this, Stoller said "well that's why they're doing the investigation." I read all of this as Stoller wanting to protect the reputation of Lina Khan, who (to her credit) appears to be doing some real antitrust busting. One of the few Biden promises that seems to be getting some real follow through.
I guess--as Taibbi suggested in his testimony--everyone has their motives.
I read it too, but have cut back on my paid subscriptions, so just get the free version. Stoller really cares about--and is an expert in--this area. One funny detail is that he will actively ban commenters that he finds trollish or unproductive. I can certainly understand why one would want to do that, but...it's arguably not the best look in this day and age.
I'm not sure you contextually understand his objections to said legislation .
It's one thing to have read those pieces of legislation and object to his reasoning for not supporting them is another, if your frame of reference was formed by an opinion article or of cable mouth piece, it is suspect. If it is not the case then I wholly support opinion. Even if we differ on it.
I can’t believe Democrats put me in a position to side with Jim Jordan. Unreal.
Look what they do in banking. My dad said it best - “This isn’t capitalism. In bailing out SVB, after first lying about it, they’ve cemented ensuring profits are private and losses are socialized.” It can’t surprise you they also think freedom of speech is whatever the Brandon administration says is ok and everyone who complains is a domestic terrorist.
It’s klepto-corporate multinational globalist technocracy. A caste system of two classes. The Uber-rich and powerful and the working poor. The middle class has been gutted and otherwise healthy, able bodied people are encouraged not to work. The endgame is to create a nation of government dependency and ownership. That’s when the fun begins. And freedom ends.
That's what Piketty said in CAPITAL a decade ago. Add the Victor Davis Hanson admonition that a healthy citizenship and a thriving middle class is necessary for a Republic to survive. Napoleon observed that financier's have no allegiance to country at all (though they love wrapping themselves in the flag). I'm finding that thinking of America as the Constitutional Republic it is rather than as a Democracy grounds my frame of reference, lessens my sense of vitriol and allows me a little objectivity.
They aren’t bailing out SVB, but it isn’t clear who is providing the money to cover deposits. It also isn’t clear who talked and set off the bank run before SVB could quietly raise the capital to cover its bond portfolio losses. Did someone make a nice profit shorting SVB stock? The share holders are now SOL, but that’s what happens when you gamble, I mean invest in the stock market.
They are bailing out SVB. They announced a special assessment on other banks - which is passed along to all of us in the form of higher fees and interest rates. SVB incompetence set off the run. Rather than normal bond ladders high schoolers can grasp, they invested their reserves in long term fed funds and mortgage backed securities in 2021 despite inflation and the feds making clear they’d raise rates to address it. SVB just held the damn things as they tanked. Then a funding round flopped and they had to sell below par because interest rates have been rising for over a year. Depositors ran on the bank because it was being run by incompetent people. It is absolutely a bail out.
All true but I am not persuaded that depositors should be wiped out. If a business cannot make payroll, who suffers the most?
I will watch for administrative and criminal proceedings against the SVB board and senior officers. Notoriously, nobody responsible for the bank and insurance failures of 2007-10 ever stood trial or even suffered a meaningful administrative penalty, like a lifetime ban from any position in the finance industry, and Obama bragged about that.
We have seen time and again, that financial harm to the businesses means nothing to the psychopaths who run them. Even the loss of their future stock options leaves them far richer than 99% of the population. It is time to put them in prison and leave their families impoverished. Maybe that will change some behaviors.
And, to be clear, a5 years of the Fed suppressing interest rates led banks like SVB into investments far too risky for a public bank. Then, the incredible federal deficits under Biden set the stage for the inflation that led the Feds to jack up interest rates, which in turn reduced the value of the securities SVB held, making them potentially insolvent. All those government officials are no doubt beyond reach, but it is important that they be shamed and their reputations ruined... won't happen, but justice does demand no less.
Depositors would not have been wiped out. They would have gotten $0.85-$0.90 on the dollar over $250K. If you don’t let business fail when their is incompetence, and people fe we l that, you get more incompetence. The people in Ohio can’t even get water filters for their houses. If this has been a bank for regular people and normal small businesses there would be no “you get your cash back.” This is cementing a 2-tiered system. Government spending is so massive the government pucks winners and losers. Now regulators are picking who is immune from poor decisions. It’s sick.
I think you might want to check your arithmetic. According to this morning's Wall Street Journal, at the end of 2022, SVB had $157 billion in deposits on their books from approximately 37,000 depositors. That works out to on average over $4 million per depositor. Where was the other 80%+ going to come from after the FDIC chips in their $250K guarantee? Most of the depositors would have gotten CRUSHED had Mr. Taxpayer not stepped in to bail them out AGAIN. Same circus - different clowns.
Who keeps over $250k in a bank account? My guess is that it's people who have LOTS of money, i.e., those who can afford to lose $25k-$40k without a second thought.
Depositors are never wiped out. We have a system for failed banks. The bank is seized. Insured deposits, up to $250K, are immediately available. The banks is sold or the bank assets are liquidated. Uninsured deposits are then repaid, to the extent possible. In this case, Yellen is ignoring the $250K limit and simply printing money to make billionaires whole.
Assuming no intervention, assuming things work as pre-determined by current regs and policies, then Silicon Valley is gutted, we lose a lot of tech companies that help keep us competitive in the world, and by mid-week, Regional Banks across the USA are failing.
Distinguish between depositors and bank executives and shareholders, and politicians. The latter set up an environment conducive for failure with COVID lockdowns, inflationary policies, and negligent regulation. The bank was negligent, invested in way too many long-term Treasuries and not recognizing the impact of the tightening tech investment climate. The depositors are victims. If we punish them, pretty much every business reacts by moving their funds to CitiBank, Chase, and BankOfAmeria because they are too big to fail.
And for Little Tech, waiting a year to make them whole is not an option. The climate for VC's to invest in small tech is dried up. Nobody is giving new lines of credit to little tech in 2023. They will just die.
I agree, this is exactly what is happening.
There are something like 40,000 depositors and I doubt most of them are billionaires--a lot of small and medium sized businesses using the bank primarily as a checking account, maybe a line of credit for business cash-flow purposes. and if they are limited to $250K FDIC insurance a lot of them will be wiped out and their employees and vendors will not be paid.
And I doubt if many billionaires have a large part of their holdings in bank CDs, anyway. I mean, really!!
Yes, there is no literal "wipe out," but if you are running a business with a monthly churn of a couple of million dollars, $250K doesn't do much. to keep you afloat.
This is a difficult problem, if depositors are not made whole regional banks will all fail and people and businesses will only do business with the huge, systemically important (too big to fail) banks, and personally, I don't want to see banking concentrated in a small oligopoly.
There is no perfect answer, but something along the lines of more generous FDIC coverage coupled with limitations on what banks can invest in (i.e., not highly speculative, volatile stuff like mortgage backed securities) would be a step in the right direction.
And, some prosecutions and clawbacks, both as simple justice and "pour encourager les autres," as Voltaire described the execution of Admiral Byng as an example to other admirals.
SVB was paying 5.48% on Deposits. I did not know this until yesterday, but now I remain more convinced the depositors don’t deserve a bail-out.The rest of us, getting well under a 1% on deposits at responsible banks that responsibly hedged their rate risk, are now footing the bill for the downside risks of deposits with a 5.48% return. That is wrong and is nothing more than reallocation of wealth to rich Silicon Valley tech companies.
Was that 5.48% on 60 month CDs or checking accounts? If on the former, given what the Fed has been doing, not a big deal, 2yr Treasury Notes have been around 4.5%. If on demand deposits then yeah, that is a real problem, tho I still worry about employees and vendors getting stiffed.
I am encouraged to see people suing these banks and their executives, and hope to see aggressive action from the regulators. The people responsible need to suffer real harm. Maybe some depositors deserve a haircut. But the employees and suppliers to those depositors not being paid for work already done or materials or services already provided? I don’t see that.
Well said and well written. Nice work.
Depositors assume risk. If they don't, whose risk do you think it should be?
Depositors, yes, but their employees? And suppliers? and the suppliers' suppliers? Is it reasonable to have the supplier to a supplier to a supplier vet the bank that the final customer uses? All the banks that all its customers use?
This is a fundamental problem with fractional reserve banking and won't go away, but we can make things better or worse. If I had my way we would go back to separating deposit-taking banks from investment banks, with the former tightly regulated almost like public utilities, and with robust insurance, and the latter only lightly regulated to address fraud, but no insurance at all, by law.
I would also reconsider mark-to-market, a cure for a real problem (misleading, even fraudulent accounting for assets) but worse than the disease. Mark-to-market is misleading in all cases other than imminent liquidation... the bonds will pay the income stream and repay principal as guaranteed, regardless of what interest rate swings may do to their present value. This happened in 2007-08 and again last week---M2M creates an appearance of insolvency when there is none, and that sets off a panic. I would not go back to the previous system, but M2M has created catastrophes. We need a better way.
We seem to have forgotten what Walter Bagehot knew in the 1870s---when a bank is in trouble, you should investigate its assets and liabilities. If it is solvent but temporarily illiquid, loan it what it needs to survive, at a high rate of interest, with the interest being incentive to not get into that sort of situation in the future.. If it is truly insolvent, let it die.
It would have been better to take a couple of days to go over the books and figure out whether the bank was worth saving, or not, and if not, to figure out to what extent liquidation would cover depositors. It may be that even in liquidation the uninsured depositors would have seen 80% or more in a couple of weeks, in which case I would be much more amenable to no govt intervention beyond the FDIC insurance limit and overseeing an orderly shut-down and liquidation.
I cannot know for sure, but I suspect that SVB was neither illiquid nor really insolvent at the end of February, but the M2M value of its assets, reduced more than they expected due to the Fed raising interest rates faster than they expected, to fight inflation, created the appearance of possible insolvency, which led to a run. At that point, the panic has a life of its own.
Why the only way we can fight price increases is to trash the economy and destroy jobs and businesses, is a question for another day.
Oh hell! Not the mortgage-backed securities again. Thanks for the added info. Incompetence is right.
Right. I as a simple peasant know that mortgage-backed securities were Musical Chairs. The last person holding them gets screwed – until the bailout.
America's best and brightest...from Sand Hill Rd even. I've been to Sand Hill Rd. Pitched VCs on Sand Hill Rd. They are the cream of the crop. The top layer. The creme de la creme. Is it hubris or...what was/is this? I mean, the Chief Investment Officer went to Harvard, right?
The modern credential (Ivy League degree) seems to be worth about as much as a medieval Church Indulgence.
Indulgences? they call them carbon credits now
It's sad that Harvard and the other Ivys still show up so high in national and world rankings. Then again, maybe it's not so surprising since the people doing the ranking are Ivy grads themselves.
Not when I was there lol.
His incompetence may explain why SVB's CEO only got $3.5 million as a bonus hours before the bank was seized.
And Gavin Newsom’s wife is on the board of SVB by the way
That puts the cherry on top of this shit cake.
Deposits are insured up to 250k. Or are they? It’s Silicon Valley. Rich depositors are being made whole....by us. Now if it were Oklahoma Farmers Bank....
It is most certainly is a bailout. Yellen is printing any money necessary, which is a cute way of making taxpayers responsible for billionaire losses. Depositors were mainly Valley billionaires and 9 figure VCs, that ran their money thru startups. The notion they didn't realize FDIC insurance limits were $250K is laughable. What they knew, is that the rules never apply to them and that Dems would bail them out of any unfortunate outcomes, resulting from bad business decisions. Private profits and nationalized losses, should be the Dem 2024 slogan.
there is an argument for protecting depositors, irrespective of who the depositors are. I am aware of folks whose business were not large but did all their banking with SVB. Which means they lost their LOC too. So its not all rich VC. Also, those rich folks likely would not lose their deposits though they would be locked up for some time as the assets were sold off and possibly subject to a haircut.
Who do you think owns those small businesses? FDIC limits exist because we cannot charge enough premiums to banks, to insure every dime banked in the US. US banking law had a system that worked well for failed banks. Banks are seized. Immediately every depositor has access up to $250K. The bank is sold or assets are sold, and from those proceeds, uninsured deposits are paid, to the extent possible. That is gone, blown to shreds without a vote in Congress. When a bank in Iowa fails, are farmers with a million bucks in deposits going to take their $250K and wait? Or are farmers in Iowa expected to wait, because they are not as important as the Silicon Valley geniuses that ran the 16th largest US bank for 8 months, without a risk manager?
The last comment i one I have made in other places, though SVB was doing a "bang up job" on climate and social issues, they seem to have relegated their primary responsibility to the third team. (I for one am scared about getting on a United airlines plane for the first time in my life based on their "do good" campaign. I prefer they focus on getting me where I am going safely and on time. If they are as "successful" in their goal as SVB, a lot of people are going to die.)
You make a fair point and many of my friends feel the same way. I do think from a depositors side, it is more complicated for some but My contention in this thread is blaming the depositors is misguided. wE know who is to blame here and I strongly suspect they will cry all the way to the (SIB) bank.
This is the bank that lobbied to remove the regulations that would've saved them from exactly this kind of collapse. I have zero sympathy for them. Most of their depositors are Silicon Valley startups that should've been smart enough to keep their payroll in a bank that didn't engage in the extreme gambling this bank did. Those startups' founders got sweetheart mortgage loans from SVB to keep their payroll with SVB. Screw them. They should face the music for their bad business decisions. Bailing out these depositors will be disastrous for our democracy. Tea Party #2 is waiting in the wings.
It's even worse than I suspected:
SILICON VALLEY BANK USED FORMER MCCARTHY STAFFERS TO WEAKEN REGULATIONS, LOBBY FDIC
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-used-former-mccarthy-staffers-to-weaken-regulations-lobby-fdic/
First, I am all for clawing back any gains from the management team that were made in the last x years. My worst fear in all of this is there will be no punishment for poor management and the moral hazard will continue. And that is important because this was not gambling, it was incompetence. There is a difference. This was a failure to match their duration risk. And i doubt the regulators would catch that as I do not think they are any smarter than the guys at SVB.
This is a problem that every bank is dealing with due to interest rate increases and we will see which banks had crap risk management and which ones were competent. And please don't tell me that you saw this coming as you would be buying your yacht right now, not commenting on this forum. So do not blame the depositors because they did not see it coming as SVB had a sterling reputation, maybe unearned, but there was no due diligence to perform. The moral hazard issue is important and should be dealt with as such, but assigning guilt on the depositors is not the way to address this.
SVB CEO Greg Becker sold his bank stock just before the collapse.
They did bail out SVB and signature. This is not about portfolio loss it’s about duration and the fact that no one at SVB understood that while taking in millions in bonuses is telling
The losses on the mortgages are big, but I'm curious how the losses in their loan portfolio look after using wokeness and DEI as funding criteria. I bet that could have blown up the bank even without the awful bet on mortgages.
i doubt it. This was duration problem. I think the fact that they bought MBS can be misleading. The fact is their long protfolio was mismatched with their short portfolio. The upshot is that for the last 10+ years every member of the Fed and the gov (R and D) has ignored the threat of inflation. COVID policies were the last straw. But instead of doing something they tried to wish it away by calling it transitory. when the Fed finally had to raise, the banks, despite years of warning and history from the 80's got caught flat footed. I suspect because they were too busy fighting racism and climate change to pay attention to risk management (eg their most important job.)
You speak truth.
Bingo!
An article in the Wall Street Journal tonight stated that it's being funded by an inter Bank fund and a special program put together with the fed. Whatever that means!
SVB couldn't quietly raise the capital it needed because it is upside-down in all its Treasury investments and lacked collateral to secure additional financing. So the bonds are worth less than they paid (see also, 'unrealized losses') and the bank just doesn't possess assets to cover its liabilities - the depositors. So it's a toxic investment for other banks to buy into. Banks reinvest deposits to make money (that has to be a reasonably sound investment) and it doesn't always work. Bonds are thought to be one of the most secure assets, but core inflation and interest rate hikes gutted their return. So they invested $10 in bonds and now they're worth 6.
SVB is guilty of under-diversifying, over-leveraging what they had, and making stupid, rookie investment decisions. this wasn't a stock market thing at all, it was a financial incompetence thing. Highly recommend Patrick Boyle on YT to help sort things out.
What about the nice return depositors at SVB got - 5.48% on deposits while those of us footing the bill for the bailout via higher fees and rates get like 0.18% from the banks that are responsible in hedging their interest rate risk and will actually do business with us? How are we not bailing out the downside risk to essentially an investment for these people with a guaranteed return of 5.48% annually? What other group, and in what other circumstances, could anyone else access a 5.48% return for the last 2 years with a risk free backstop from loss? How is it not a bailout to ensure insane returns of 5.48% on bank deposits for billionaires and failing tech startups?
Yes, it’s clearly a bailout no matter what the government and MSM are calling it. SVB board and executives should be held accountable for their incompetence, but I doubt that will ever happen. And now we have the new “Bank Term Funding Program” (BTFP) ...
I was not aware of that. If that is correct it puts the onus on the depositors as anyone would know that those are not the returns of a FDIC insured account.
zzzzz
zzzzzz
I read that the execs got their bonuses just before the shutdown.
Does anyone know if that's been confirmed?
I understand BofA was enticing its customers, or was it JPMorgan? We don’t have to wonder who will be making the depositors whole.
Absolutely correct and socialized on the backs of the middle classes. They take the profits and we take the risks.
Your comment is the most telling of them all. It seems that the Democrats have become so dysfunctional in thought and expression they’re driving the “children” they claim to care so much about into the arms of their “enemy.”
When dysfunction becomes too extreme people run, as far as possible, away from it.
I am not sure why that seems strange, Jordan is more coherent and principled than the majority of his peers.
He's one of the 10 out of 535 people in that fucking den of iniquity that are honest.
I thought the den on iniquity was the college gym and shower room.
At Penn State perhaps.
It’s weird, Biden and Fauci and Joe Paterno strike me as having a few things in common. It’s like the regular world is anathema to them. The coach once was quoted as saying why would he retire and do what - mow grass? Entitled ppl have a plan of the future and never let reality get in the way. That’s when they get into trouble - eventually. Some don’t
I can give you a list as big as the phone book of people I would like to hang out with before Jim Jordan. But i like what he is doing
I could be wrong, but he seems like he's just being opportunistic here.
Protecting your 1st Amendment is not important ?
Of course it is, and I found him to be a sympathetic character in this circus (I'm neither R nor D). But if the tables were turned I can imagine Jordan not getting so fired up about the issue. Like I said, I could be wrong—maybe Jordan is a true civil libertarian and free speech warrior. But he strikes me as being more of a savvy political operator than a true idealist.
I think the point is that we have never ever ever had a group of people destroying civil liberties as ruthlessly as the current leadership. No one I know can remember anything like this happening before. It makes no sense to ask what Jim Jordan would do if rolls were reversed. I don’t think he would ever let things get this evil to begin with. This is one side of the political aisle who have crossed a line that has never been crossed before.
you make a fair point - its why I might agree with one or another at a certain point but I would never trust them. Thus my phone book comment.
Why wouldn't he be opportunistic, when provided with such a tempting opportunity?
What is this "phone book" you speak of?
showing my age....it also doubled as a booster seat at Thanksgiving
It's called, "list of enemies that are the enemy of my enemy ergo, my friend, for now"
Yes, as a former Democrat myself, whole damn scene is unbelievable, isn’t it? My old friends (in DC) are now my enemies, and my old enemies my new friends.
Right—who would have ever dreamed that Tucker Carlson would be the voice of reason???
I used to HATE Tucker and now I’ll sometimes share his videos.
I still don't like him, and I'm not sure why - just something about him.
But DAAaaaammmmnnnn, he's just nailing people that need to be nailed.
SAME!!
Most of the psyop is the distortion and manipulation of reality to create extreme emotion, projection and loss of objectivity. There are no facts only accusation's (as demonstrated in the hearing). Knee-jerk is a disease I'm trying to recover from.
Tucker is a man with a rigid moral compass. Many don’t like the way it points, but he is firm on his direction. Everyone forgets that he describes himself as a libertarian first. Personally, I’d love to see Matt team up with Tucker on the J6 videos. I trust Matt to tell us in a different way the good, bad, and ugly.
Look up how Tucker sent emails to Hunter Biden toadying up for help with getting one of his kids into school. He's a fraud like the rest of them; he just plays a different assigned role in The Show.
It's all bullshit. There's no R and there's no D, except for a few genuine little small potatoes here and there who are either too dumb or too valiant to realize it's all stage lights and greasepaint. There's Them and there's Us. That's it.
While it may be true that Tucker and Hunter are both part of the same club, there is still some difference of opinion among members of the Club. For example, Tucker genuinely does disapprove of the open borders policy and has been a vocal critic for many years. He has also been a critical of our nonstop foreign interventions, and he is one of the few journalists other than Matt who has had anything bad to say out the vulture capitalists eating this country alive. I really do believe that very few people other than Tucker could have done the segment of Cabela's and Paul Singer without getting taken off the air. The only reason Tucker hasn't been removed from his platform is precisely because he's one of Them. And so while you are certainly right to question his motives and take everything he says with a grain of salt, he is still a rare and valuable dissenting voice among the elites.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jseaman/p/the-mortal-storm?r=16x9b8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That is precisely why I get my news from Matt. I get that Tucker is part of big media, but he does have issues that he will present accurately and with fervor. But he freely admits that he is an opinion guy--a commentator. I absolutely love Tucker's interviews and specials. He asks the questions that I want asked. But! All that said, I get my news from guys like Matt.
The Twitter files wouldn't have happened without subscription journalism and the Republican's are at least politically malleable right now. The psyop (MSM/surveillance state/criminal finance) talks over the top of us and openly lies because they can get away with it. The more truth we speak the more light shines on the lie. There is a huge change factor in that.
So he tried to help his kid and that negates all of the research, evidence and videos he has shown? I think you may be missing the forest for the trees. I’m not a Tucker fan, but I’m a truth fan. And as far as main stream media goes there’s hardly a shred of it besides Carlson.
My thought. Like the Taibbi Twitter files the J/6 footage needs to go to review and report by a qualified unbiased journalist. Not because of any left/right concern but because you and I deserve the truth. The DNC/surveillance state willingness to openly lie reveals how pathologically vicious they are.
He trafficked in evil for craven personal gain. There is no other way to interpret that action. There is no fucking school in the world that is worth groveling for favors from that shitstain Hunter Biden and anyone who "help[s] his kid" by trying to implant said kid deeper in to the rotting carcass that is the elite power structure in this country has demonstrated that he is a corrupt liar obviously hoovering up the bucks to tell the rubes what they want to hear.
Anyone who spends his days looking at what Tucker Carlson looks at and doesn't conclude that the best place for his family is a dairy farm in Iowa, not anywhere within a thousand miles of anywhere that Hunter Biden's influence is a plus, is one of them. This is not hard to figure out.
Learn to live without trying to find heroes, is my advice. No one is coming to save you. It's up to you.
I agree (with a suggestion). "Us" are the citizen's of the American Constitutional Republic. We're not capitalist, communist or DNC/RNC hack's. We are free and responsible citizen's of the Republic.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jseaman/p/the-mortal-storm?r=16x9b8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/jseaman/p/the-mortal-storm?r=16x9b8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Maybe my memory is faulty because I was pretty liberal back in the 00s, but I remember despising Tucker during the Bush II era. That was bowtie Tucker. I should go back and watch some of his stuff from back then.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jseaman/p/the-mortal-storm?r=16x9b8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
he hasn't changed. He described himself as a libertarian. I see why when I hear his rants on freedom of speech and corrupt government. he and I share the same roots. Most think me a conservative. I identify as conservative. Truth be told, I am a strict constructionist of our constitution. I guess that is conservative in a way.
He does seem to nail his points to the wall, like ducks.
For real. A few years ago I'm not sure if I would have slowed down for him in a crosswalk. Now he's the only MSM person speaking Truth. Upside down world.
I might even start wearing a bow tie now.
They have shown their true color and it isn’t red, white and blue or anything resembling blue. It is black. Not as in racial identity, but as in soulless.
The hearings of the past few days should leave no doubt. The despicable attacking of Matt and Shellenberger, Nicholas Wade, the young man who’d written a book about the necessity for nuclear energy and fossil fuels until there is something proven more effective and available… accused of racism, collusion, shilling for Putin… I was sickened and frightened. It was obscene.
I think what we're viewing is pathological not political. I'm saying this because of the damage I'm witnessing around me and the inability of American elected political leadership to acknowledge and address it.
It’s called “walking away.” I left the Democratic party circa 2015.
I used to read the LA Times, NYT, and Wall Street Journal every day. I occasionally still read the WSJ, but not so much.
It is really eye-opening to listen to the source yourself, and then read the reporting on it later on these publications. Unbelievable the lies and spinned narratives that are “reported” as FACT... it was and still is shocking to me the lies that we are regularly told.
I get my news, now, from substack writers, Rumble videos, Real America’s Voice (I especially like Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk and Wayne Allyn Root), and Tucker Carlson (the rest of Fox News is just... “outrage” culture and garbage as far as I am concerned).
Welcome this thing we call honest reality. Where, yeah, it's appropriate to discipline your children, teach them right from wrong, and call out the union loving Uber libs that think otherwise. I like to call it conservatism.
Me, too, Blake. Voted Dem for 30 years and even campaigned for them. I’ll never forgive them for embracing censorship, authoritarianism, and becoming the party of warmongering elites. This whole experience has made me question all of my principles, everything I held as true.
It’s going around.
The Democrats have put me in a position to side with Franklin Graham… and I’m Jewish, albeit not terribly devout in practice, socially liberal in the classic sense and during my time volunteering at the Dali’ Museum became the infamous “ Indecent Docent”.
Whatever the once Democrats call themselves, they are no longer recognizable as anything American. They have “ transitioned” into a tyrannical, illiberal, racist, antisemitic, anti-free speech, anti-freedom, anti-civil liberties, anti-Constitutional, pro-surveillance,pro-war,,violent,lawless,savage,intolerant Cult of Hatred For All Things Living
I know and I cannot even stand Jordan because he is always sabotaging legislation to keep big tech in check while pretending otherwise.
Matt Stoller wrote about this yesterday. As a reporter who focuses almost exclusively on antitrust issues, Stoller's viewpoint is that "Jim Jordan has been a foe of antitrust action against big tech and government action to regulate dominant firms for years."
Stoller can get way too full of himself at times, but he is right on Jordan. I think the most telling is how much Ken Buck cannot stand Jordan for derailing his antitrust efforts.
Agreed, Stoller's style can come across as arrogant and condescending. But I generally trust his judgment on antitrust matters.
On a related note, yesterday Stoller also strongly dismissed the "chilling" nature of the FTC's request for reporters' names from Twitter. He said this was business as usual for the FTC since they had worked out a consent decree with Twitter years ago regarding their playing fast and loose with user data. It wasn't clear to me that the Twitter Files were relevant to this specific abuse at all, and when a commenter called him out on this, Stoller said "well that's why they're doing the investigation." I read all of this as Stoller wanting to protect the reputation of Lina Khan, who (to her credit) appears to be doing some real antitrust busting. One of the few Biden promises that seems to be getting some real follow through.
I guess--as Taibbi suggested in his testimony--everyone has their motives.
Stoller/BIG is one of the few Substack's that talk's about actual monopoly and anti-trust legislation. I subscribe.
I read it too, but have cut back on my paid subscriptions, so just get the free version. Stoller really cares about--and is an expert in--this area. One funny detail is that he will actively ban commenters that he finds trollish or unproductive. I can certainly understand why one would want to do that, but...it's arguably not the best look in this day and age.
You know what they say about opinions Gnome.
Is it: "if I had a nickel for every opinion, I'd have a pretty good amount of nickels" ?
Um... no.
Actually, doesn’t pretend otherwise. He’s quite clear abt putting checks on big tech.
Okay, cool. Maybe it was time for a 'cute puppy' break.
I'm not sure you contextually understand his objections to said legislation .
It's one thing to have read those pieces of legislation and object to his reasoning for not supporting them is another, if your frame of reference was formed by an opinion article or of cable mouth piece, it is suspect. If it is not the case then I wholly support opinion. Even if we differ on it.