The bailout hustle

Posted: March 14, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Silicon Valley and New York City bankers got a good deal: a bailout worth billions of dollars in exchange for millions in campaign funds for Democrats.

But the cozy relationship between bankers and Democrats is a fairly recent development.

My father was a banker in the Midwest and a diehard Republican. He condemned FDR’s spending policies, loved Ronald Reagan, and wanted the government to balance the budget and stay away from his paycheck.

In fact, I thought for years that you had to join the Republican Party to become a banker. As a boomer, I thought my father was a bit off his rocker in his politics, and I wish I had told him just how right he was.

Today’s bankers remind me of the commodities traders I reported on in the 1970s. They’ll bet on almost anything.

Silicon Valley Bank bet on almost every tech idea that came through the doors.

But Andy Kessler of The Wall Street Journal goes beyond the gambling. “Management screwed up interest rates, underestimated customer withdrawals, hired the wrong people, and failed to sell equity. You’re really only allowed one mistake; more proved fatal. Was management hubristic, delusional, or incompetent? Sometimes there’s no difference,” he wrote.

Signature Bank of New York added political wokeness to the combination. The bank refused to do business with Donald Trump, scolding him for the events of January 6, 2021.

Despite all this nonsense, Biden & Co. will bail out the banks even though the White House says it’s not a bailout, providing funds to depositors who recklessly kept more than $250,000 in the banks. Federal bank insurance would not have covered that money until Biden waived the limit.

But the math doesn’t work. Silicon Valley Bank had $173 billion in total deposits, including $152 billion not covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Also, the FDIC did not cover $79 billion of the $88 billion in deposits at Signature Bank.

That’s nearly double the amount at the FDIC to cover all the depositors over $250,000.

Treasury officials said any losses to the DIF would be repaid in full by raising fees on the system’s banks. If the FDIC charges banks higher fees to cover the extra money, those costs will probably be passed onto the consumer through higher costs, such as increased ATM charges and overdraft fees.

So we will end up paying much of the bill for the bailout!

At least there’s a silver lining to all these shenanigans: no one will ever take Jim Cramer seriously, who told people to buy Silicon Valley Bank stock.

I Declare March 18th “Hurray We’re Not Dead Day” Since Greta doesn’t want to celebrate our Unexpected Survival

Posted: March 14, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Eula Goodnight: Marshal Cogburn, we’re ready to go. Shooting cornbread in a meadow is not taking us anywhere. And my father’s murderers ride free.

Rooster Cogburn: Well, Sister, I was just celebratin’ a little.

Eula Goodnight: Celebrating what?

Rooster Cogburn: Bein’ alive, Sister. Bein’ alive.

Rooster Cogburn 1975

I’m slightly confused.

Five years ago Greta Thunburg thought the world was going to end in five years.

It didn’t.

So she deleted the tweet that said it would happen and that’s all.

But WHY is that all?

Shouldn’t she be happy that the world didn’t end? Isn’t the idea that we all didn’t die from climate change a reason for people all over the world to celebrate?

Yet none of the people who agreed with this dire prediction seem pleased, they just seem to want to quietly walk away.

Hey if my Doctor had told me I had five years to live and five years later I was still going strong I’d throw a party.

But in fairness to Greta this happened before. In January of 2006 Al Gore said we had ten years to save the planet and the great Rush Limbaugh decided to run with it:

Now, the last time I heard some liberal talk about “ten years” it was 1988, Ted Danson. We had ten years to save the oceans; we were all going to pay the consequences, which would result in our death. Now Al Gore says we’ve got ten years. Ten years left to save the planet from a scorching. Okay, we’re going to start counting. This is January 27th, 2006. We will begin the count, ladies and gentlemen. This is just… You have to love these people — from afar, and from a purely observational point of view.

Ten years later the clock ran out and for some reason Al Gore didn’t celebrate the fact that mankind had survived either.

You’d think they all wanted us to burn, or starve or something.

Well personally even with all the problems the world still has I think this calls for a party so I declare March 18th 2023 A Day of Celebration of us all being alive so let’s party using a slight variation of my own Happy Birthday Song

♫ Hurray we're not dead! ♪
Hurray we're not dead!

We haven't died yet
We haven't died yet

Five years have passed and we're still here
The Climate death did not appear

So let  have a laugh and give a cheer
Hurry we're not dead!

♪ We're not dead. ♫

Climate change didn’t kill us, HUZZAH!

As the Banks Come Tumbling Down

Posted: March 13, 2023 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration
Tags: ,

You want confirmation Captain? Take a look [Pointing to the Fleet burning] There’s your confirmation!


Tora Tora Tora 1970

For those of you eager to see what the sitting president does about banks suddenly failing let me remind you of something.

Three years ago some of us warned that allowing an election to be stolen rather than confronting the problem head on might have long term consequences that would shake the nation. But we were ignored, or cancelled or imprisoned

We ended up with mandates, drag queen story hours, an FBI acting like the left’s private gestapo, disaster in Afghanistan and War in Ukraine. And now bank failures while the crooks involved in this are amassing generational wealth.

All because people were afraid to make waves.

And if the bank with the woke risk assessor more interested in pride events than, you know managing risk or and Signature bank with former Democrat rep Barney Frank on the board fails, oh well.

Since both of these banks are Democrat donors or connected let me tell you how this is going to endvia Yes Prime Minister:

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But if you knew they were crooks

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: We didn’t

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But you could have made enquiries..

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: You don’t make enquiries of that sort in the city. They seemed like decent chaps and decent chaps don’t check up on decent chaps to see if they are behaving like decent chaps.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: And ignorance is worth paying 14 million pounds for?

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Ignorance is safety it’s not a crime to be deceived and it’s not our own money is it? [Turning to the waiter handing the him the check] Oh thank you.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: So What’s going to happen?

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Well there’s only one answer. The Bank of England must bail out Philips Berrison. No publicity keep it in the family, and that way we get our money back.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: At the taxpayer’s expense.

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Of course.

Yes Prime Minister A Conflict of Interest 1987

You can bet your bottom dollar that Joe Biden’s bosses will make sure that these guys get every penny back to preserve confidence in the financial system because they are friends of the left .and if you and I have to pay for it, oh well.

Closing thought via Instapundit’s comment section:

“The government spent all weekend so they could bail out rich politically connected investors. Compare this to East Palestine Ohio where it took the government 3 weeks to even pretend to give a damn. Seriously the government worked over a weekend to just help out rich tech investors. Contrast that with 3 weeks before the feds did anything to even pretend to help out a community dealing with a massive chemical spill.”

#unexpectedly of course

Update: Don Surber Nails it:

As I watched the sudden collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, I marveled once again at how a geezer’s administration run by tokens of diversity can wreck the economy by turning mundane functions — say, unloading transport ships — into extraordinary catastrophes, such as a supply chain backlog.

Go read it all and subscribe

Reverse Missionaries in Action

Posted: March 12, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

18th and 19th Century and early 20th Century Americans and Brits take a bow.

During those days hundreds if not thousands of missionaries visited Africa spreading the word of both Christianity and the rights of man attempting to teach the idea that man’s equality before God and before the law.

It is now the 21st Century and Western Civilization is having a crisis faith in both of those things, primarily due to the successful attempts by the left to de-Christianize us and lo and behold Africa is stepping into the breach:

From the Anglican Churches in Africa:

Conservative Anglican archbishops in Africa are challenging a decision by the Church of England to allow clergy to bless same sex couples’ marriages, warning that the move puts the worldwide Anglican Communion in further jeopardy.

It seems the missionaries who went there taught them too well.

“The Church of England is very good at making contradictory statements and expecting everyone to believe both can be true at the same time. That’s what they have done with this decision,” said Archbishop Stephen Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu of Uganda in his statement.

Kaziimba said that despite the English church’s insistence that it was not changing its doctrine on marriage, it is doing exactly that, the only significant difference being the terminology of wedding versus a service of blessing.

“The Church of England … has now departed from the Bible and their message is the opposite,” said Kaziimba. “They are even offering to bless that sin. That is wrong. As the Church of Uganda, we cannot accept that. God cannot bless what he calls sin.”

Or as they put it so well: “We can’t walk with you unless you repent.“

Meanwhile an African reporter covering the White House says bluntly what American Reporters seem to be afraid to say both about the events of January 6th:

Some are now trying to crucify @FoxNews @TuckerCarlson over January 6th footage because America has decided to live a lie, blame only @realDonaldTrump and turn a blind eye to the massive security failure on January 6, 2021. But many people around the world continue to wonder, how on earth was it possible that in the greatest country in the world, in the most armed nation on the planet with the best and most expensive security agencies in the universe, one of the most important buildings was left unprotected and was easily taken over by protesters while the presidential election was being certified and the Vice President was in the building? Why is no serious investigation done to understand that security failure and hold accountable every person who was in charge that day? Isn’t that the most important investigation to be carried out?

Those are the words of Simon Ateba the Chief White House Correspondent of Today News Africa. He follows up with the most obvious question about the left’s reactions to those questioning the 2020 elections.

Also, why is it hard to understand that when an election takes place during a pandemic, with millions of people shipping ballots rather than showing up at voting centers on election day, many people would be skeptical about the results of that election, especially when the candidate who lost won the election day vote?

That’s a rather obvious statement and he continues but making a point I’ve been asking for years.

Instead of labeling people election deniers, is it not better to ensure that even the appearance of fraud is eliminated by having most people vote in-person on election day and with proper identification?

I submit and suggest the answer is clear, because if they do have an honest election the left can’t win or do you think it’s a coincidence that after Ron DeSantis got rules passed to clean up elections in Florida the Democrat party collapsed like a paper tiger?

While there are many places where these lesions did not take root as they might (see South Africa and Zimbabwe) we take our hats off to those missionaries who made the difference

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