Phx-Suns.Net

This is good.

The GOP will find a way to say it’s all a bad thing somehow.

There's a big story going on right now about a bank, Silicon Valley Bank, that is going down in flames and taking several tech startups and companies with it. Basically they are the trendy bank in the Bay Area and lots of tech companies put their money into this bank for safe keeping. But concerns about a recent stock sale and other bank activity caused a lot of folks online to get spooked and decide to make a run on the bank and pull their money out. This is sending SVB into a tailspin and causing them to fall into insolvency in the course of just a few days.

Various Bay Area VC types and investors are freaking out and asking the US government to step in and help out.







There are a bunch of stories about various tech companies possibly having lost all of their funds, possibly without any way to recover them. Companies may literally just collapse and go bankrupt over this.



The CEO of the bank may have known trouble was a-brewin', and got out while the gettin' was good:

That’s crazy…. Sad for the people who lost everything and hope there’s some help from them. I don’t agree with bail outs of companies by the govt and if anything would rather the govt bail out the individuals and not the institutions causing the problem.

More on SVB from Paul Krugman. Fwiw he doesn't think this will lead to a broader economic downturn or bank run on other banks.

He also got rid of the safety regulations on offshore drilling created after the Deep Water Horizon accident.

WSJ and some other conservative outlets seem to be blaming the SVB failure on "wokeness" and diversity.

More Republicans blaming SVB collapse on diversity.

She is right about one thing. America IS suffering from a crisis of incompetence. She should look in the mirror sometime.

Nodack wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 16, 2023 12:04 pm

She is right about one thing. America IS suffering from a crisis of incompetence. She should look in the mirror sometime.

Yep. She's the worst. Well, her and Green (however you spell it; refuse to google it). The Trump disciples of which Trump of course is the king of the worst.

The Fed announced that they'll raise rates another quarter point the other day.

In other news, it looks like there is still a bit of a run on banks in the wake of the recent SVB fiasco. In particular folks are pulling money out of smaller banks and moving it into larger ones.

I didn't really know where to put this. I found this interview interesting between Jon Stewart and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. He basically is asking her why the US DOD can't pass an audit to account for where its $850 billion budget really goes, and says that this implies waste or corruption, since just a few tens of billions per year could eliminate homelessness or food insecurity or other important problems. He's done some thought-provoking interviews lately.

This debt ceiling stuff is so stupid. They should abolish the debt ceiling. It's a stupid concept.



Paul Krugman thinks the US should sell bonds to get funds. He doesn't like the "trillion dollar coin" hack.

Kevin McCarthy appears willing to be that guy, which is why we’re in this mess.

I agree with the gist of this article. Treat Congressional Republicans as the psychos they are, and deal with them as such. Take extreme measures to get rid of the debt ceiling issue once and for all.

The stupid thing about this debt ceiling stuff is that the Republicans obviously don't give a shit about decreasing the deficit or reducing the debt. What they're actually asking for, making the Trump tax cuts permanent, would add trillions to the debt. It's just a plain and simple power grab.

How many times have we seen this exact same scenario play out year after year, decade after decade? Republicans get in office and it’s “What deficit?” Dems get in power and the same cons say “OMG the deficit!” It’s so disingenuous and you would think people would start to catch on by now but, nope.

To me the most patriotic thing you can do for your country is serve in the military. The second most patriotic thing you can do for your country is pay your taxes. Am I the the only guy in America that sees it that way? Taxes pay for everything it takes to run our country. Massive tax cuts for the super wealthy while we have a debt like we do is criminal.

When I met my wife she had several maxed out credit cards and was paying the minimum payment. I told her she was nuts and needed to deal with that asap. The interest alone is more than she was paying every month. That’s what the US is doing. It’s totally irresponsible. Instead of dealing with this in a responsible way, our leaders use the debt for political theatre and always do nothing. It makes me angry seeing these guys play their same games over and over and over thinking we are too dumb to notice. It’s all BS.

If they cared about the deficit, they wouldn't keep passing tax cuts without being able to pay for them. They don't care. In fact, the deficit usually goes down under Democrats and up under Republicans. Clinton had a balanced budget for Pete's sake (zero deficit). Didn't stop them from calling him a tax-n-spend liberal, just like they do all the Democrats. It's the same old playbook.