Biden Administration announces that the Deposit Insurance Fund, and not taxpayers, will make depositors whole after the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed; DIF funds come from fees assessed to banks, not taxes per se. I did not know the DIF currently had $100 billion in it! So feel free to push back against know-nothing right-wingers who declare it “just another bailout,” and also feel free to ask if any of them did a damn thing in 2008. I mean, many right-wingers did, but many also did not!
Ho hum, Silicon Valley Bank employed two former aides to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to lobby our government for weakened banking regulations, such as the kind that permitted Silicon Valley Bank to fail last week. Yes, the 2018 legislation weakening Dodd-Frank reforms (which were themselves not so vigorous to begin with) was a bipartisan mess, but few lobbied for it harder than Rep. McCarthy did. Presumably he will feel the appropriate amount of shame and make amends for his mistakes. I kid, of course.
Norfolk Southern sure is having a bad winter, as another train derailed in Alabama as its CEO testified before a group of angry Senators, the second such derailment since the East Palestine derailment, though neither of those, thankfully, carried toxic and/or carcinogenic chemicals. But heartened as I am to see Sen. Vance (R-OH) actually argue for something that might make a difference, I sure hope this event doesn’t become another in a long list of times our Senators grilled a CEO hard before letting him do whatever he wanted.
Pew Research Center poll finds that a staggering 83% of Black folks think our economic system either “needs major changes” or “needs to be completely rebuilt,” and I’m sure right-wingers will use this data to assert that “Black folks can’t govern themselves.” But given most Americans’ experience with capitalism, particularly lately, that argument won’t convince anyone outside the Batshit Insane Quarter (hereafter referred to as the BIQ) of the electorate, and likely not all of them, either.
Jason W. Osborne at The Conversation notes that the seemingly-exponential growth of legalized gambling “may pose a threat to college athletes,” and if you’ve ever heard (name of sport) is rigged! in your work locker room, you already know there’ll be more and more threats against athletes perceived to have cost gamblers money. And it’ll get worse, as gambling replaces work as the main money-maker in our economy for too many Americans – not that I could blame them much, since we’ve all watched financial predation replace work as the main money-maker in our economy over the last few decades.
Finally, I guess I feel a little sorry for Tennessee’s Lieutenant Governor after he got caught slapping heart-emojis on photos of a particular half-naked gay man on social media, though I must also note that his “evolving” views on LGBTQ+ issues have done nothing about the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Tennessee. But his spokeshack’s suggestion that he was just connecting with a constituent demands mockery! We shouldn’t have to send butt-grams to get our elected officials’ attention, after all.
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