SHOW NOTES: Containing the Bank Failures; Biden Gets Oil; GOP Losers
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Welcome! This will be somewhat abridged today as I’m actually doing the full thing myself. Someone is at the hospital awaiting the arrival of his son. I personally didn’t think I gave off days for stuff like that, but my wife gave me that stern look.
HEADLINE: Fed’s New Backstop Shields Banks From $300 Billion of Losses - Bloomberg
ALSO: SVB Doesn’t Deserve a Taxpayer Bailout — WSJ
Clip of the day:
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Banking Deep Dive
Philip Klien at National Review has your must read:
Anybody who considers themselves a free-market conservative should be especially concerned about this action. Regardless of the particulars, it will just add to the talking point that when Wall Street or well-connected tech companies are in trouble, the government swoops in to the rescue. And yet lawmakers won’t eliminate student debt, give away free health care, pay for child care, guarantee affordable housing . . . and insert whatever cause you like. If you support socialism for tech companies, don’t be surprised when you get it for everything else.
See also my friend David Bahnsen:
Needing to raise capital to deal with some funding issues, only to lose depositors at the word of your needing to raise capital, and in turn losing the ability to raise capital at word of losing depositors, is obviously a vicious cycle. It can only be offset by one thing: an antidote that is truthful, not hopeful. In SVB’s case, no such antidote was forthcoming. Its bond portfolio held a larger share of long-dated (therefore, underwater) maturities than expected. Worse, there appears to have been no hedges on the books whatsoever — no interest-rate swaps to hedge that rate risk they were clearly carrying. The duration on the hedged and unhedged portfolio was the same.
Investors flocked to safe-haven assets such as Treasurys and gold on Monday amid an extraordinary plan to backstop the banking system and limit the impact from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
By the way, if you are interested at all in using gold and precious metals in your portfolio, you should call Advantage Gold at 800-450-2566. They’re great without gimmicks and have fantastic prices and information.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who will be at The Gathering on stage with me in August, has a piece in the Wall Street Journal that I linked to at top. It really is a must read.
At MSNBC, they tried to blame the GOP at first, but realized they supported banking deregulation.
Biden Drills for Oil
The Biden administration gave formal approval Monday for a huge oil drilling project in Alaska known as Willow, despite widespread opposition because of its likely environmental and climate impacts.
The president is also expected to announce sweeping restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and across Alaska’s North Slope in an apparent effort to temper criticism over the Willow decision and, as one administration official put it, to form a “firewall” to limit future oil leases in the region. The Interior Department said it would issue new rules to block oil and gas leases on more than 13 million of the 23 million acres that form the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The drilling project would take place inside the petroleum reserve, which is located about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The reserve, which has no roads, is the country’s largest single expanse of pristine land.
The restrictions, however, are unlikely to offset concerns that the $8 billion Willow project, led by oil giant ConocoPhillips, will have the potential to produce more than 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years.
He is trying to split the baby — allow more drilling while pacifying environmentalists by taking key portions of Alaska off the list for drilling. That can be undone later. The bigger issue here is a recognition that we need more oil and gas. He’s doing this to moderate in the run up to 2024 and also recognizes we need lower energy prices to reduce inflation.
The Brits Get Serious About China and We Aren’t
The British Prime Minister is sounding the alarm about China. He claims the Chinese are behaving more aggressively and more authoritarian than ever before. He’s right.
Meanwhile, the New York Times Editorial Board doesn’t want us to push back against China because of climate change. Not kidding.
And this:
Does the GOP Want to Lose?
We have a problem on our hands. The stolen election crowd whose candidates lost in 2022 are pushing the same losing candidates in 2024.
The GOP wants to foist Doug Mastriano on the world for the Senate in Pennsylvania. He won’t win that either.
The GOP in Colorado might have just gone off the deep end too.
Senate Republicans are worried some of these candidates could sink efforts to take back the Senate in 2024.
The GOP has to move on from the fringe that advances conspiracy theories and rages against the left without actually articulating an optimistic vision of the future. Independent voters actually want to vote for sane candidates they like, not crazy assholes.
Pence Speaks Out
This is going to be very interest.
“History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence told hundreds of journalists at what is typically a jocular white-tie affair. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”
Pence had used similar words to talk about Trump in his book — writing that his former boss’ “reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol.”
. . . .
DeSantis, the person close to Pence said, has sky-high expectations as a “combination of Ronald Reagan and Willie Nelson and Bono all wrapped up into one. But he’s everything to everybody right now, because nobody really knows him.” Pence, the person added “is almost on the flip side of that. Everybody thinks they know him. They think they have an expectation of who he is. And then when they meet them, they’re like, ‘that’s not what I was thinking. He’s funny. He’s personable. He’s nice.’”
Other News
‘We Were Wrong’: Pioneer In Child Gender Dysphoria Treatment Says Trans Medical Industry Is Harming Kids (Daily Signal)
A third former House GOP candidate alerted to unapproved military records request (Politico)
‘A one standard deviation increase in religiosity decreases the probability of being depressed by 11 percent’ (Marginal Revolution)
Democratic leaders want the party to stop its Kamala Harris pile-on ahead of 2024 (CNN)
Banking Crisis Powers Historic Bond Rally (WSJ)
DeSantis heading to New Hampshire following stops in Iowa, Nevada, fueling more 2024 buzz (Fox)
Republicans release top targets of Democratic-held House seats in 2024 (Politico)
‘Russia Outside Russia’: For Elite, Dubai Becomes a Wartime Harbor (NY Times)
Good banking advice might be to avoid any bank that thinks crypto is a valid asset. Your money is likely more secure invested in old baseball cards or vinyl LPs than in crypto, where value and fungibility move unpredictably every time the wind blows.
"The stolen election crowd whose candidates lost in 2022 are pushing the same losing candidates in 2024"
Why does the political media chattering class ignore the Twitter Files? So they don't believe in other life in the universe, an alien spacecraft lands in their yard, kills their dog and steals their wife... and they just get up for work every morning like nothing happened?
The 2020 and the 2022 elections where most certainly stolen as the entire uniparty-aligned government, corporate media and big tech colluded, and is still colluding, the put massive thumbs on the scale of our democracy. I think the reasons establishment Republicans stick their heads in the sand over this is because of mean Tweets. It is a sorry and sad response given the consequences and implications. It really has me asking if establishment Republicans are really as principled as they like to think they are.