Trump vs. Wokeness in the Bank Failure Blame Game, Taliban Using US Weapons to Attack Police, Pence Takes Big Shots at Trump (The Five for 03/14/23)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
There’s…a lot going on.
Let’s dive into the news.
[one]
Two of the largest bank failures in history happened this week. YouTube reporter Coffeezilla has a break down that’s far better than I could write about such a complicated issue, so I highly recommend watching the above video.
So far, there are two culprits the left and right wing media are blaming.
The right wing blames wokeness, per the New York Post:
The head of risk management at Silicon Valley Bank spent considerable time spearheading multiple “woke” LGBTQ+ programs, including a “safe space” for coming-out stories, as the firm raced toward collapse.
Jay Ersapah, the boss of financial risk management at SVB’s UK branch, launched initiatives such as the company’s first month-long Pride campaign and a new blog emphasizing mental health awareness for LGBTQ+ youth.
Her efforts as the company’s European LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group co-chair earned her a spot on SVB’s “outstanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists 2022,” a list shared in a company post just four months before the bank was shut down by federal authorities over liquidity fears.
It’s worth noting here that the NY Times ignored the biggest story of the month yesterday for their daily podcast, and instead focused on “Why Republicans are afraid of E.S.G.” (basically Woke corporate policies).
Umm…I’m pretty sure the everyday American is much more afraid of banks failing.
And the left wing are blaming regulation rollbacks during the Trump administration, according to NBC News:
The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are putting new scrutiny on a 2018 law that rolled back some banking regulations, with some Democrats calling to restore those rules as the federal government steps in to protect SVB depositors.
"Congress, the White House and banking regulators should reverse the dangerous bank deregulation of the Trump era. Repealing the 2018 legislation that weakened the rules for banks like S.V.B. must be an immediate priority for Congress," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a New York Times opinion piece Monday.
Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., who is running for Senate, said she's working on legislation in the House to reverse the 2018 law, which was led by Republicans and signed by then-President Donald Trump.
This story…hasn’t even begun to be told. Any analysis about the failure of two major banks, at this point, doesn’t have enough info for us to really know what happened.
I anticipate that this will take months to unfold…but those are the perspectives as we have them now.
[two]
Well, we done did it.
The Taliban in Pakistan are now killing police with U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan.
Modern weapons and sophisticated night vision devices left behind by U.S.-led coalition forces withdrawing from Afghanistan and fleeing Afghan troops are being used by Pakistani Taliban militants to intensify attacks on law enforcement, police and experts say.
Plagued by an economic crisis, plunging currency and political polarization, Islamabad is also scrambling to contain the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned militant group. Emboldened by the Afghan Taliban's victory, the TTP has essentially gone to war against the Pakistani government.
The group was responsible for 89 attacks across Pakistan in 2022, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank. That was up slightly from 87 in 2021 despite a roughly four-month cease-fire with Islamabad that was scrapped by the militants late last year.
One thing that’s amazing to me about the media coverage of January 6th is that as horrifying as that riot was, it pales in comparison to the unimaginable views that washed over my TV and phone screen during the hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which people were tossing their babies to American troops to avoid life under Taliban rule.
August 30th, 2021 was the darkest day of my life as an American, darker than 9/11, when we saw heroes emerge to risk their lives (and often, die) saving American lives in those towers in New York.
Because on August 30th, 2021, we abandoned Afghanistan despite the fact that there hadn’t been a single combat death since 2019, the fighting was essentially over.
A nation which had become a stable democracy has now outlawed music (many musicians fled to Portugal to attempt to save Afghanistan’s heritage) and has lost it’s ancient artifacts to Taliban bombings….because the only thing those idealogue idiots are good for is blowing stuff up. A country with an incredibly rich story and past is now just a hellhole run by terrorist morons.
And 90 percent of Afghanis are short on food. No word yet on how many starved to death over the winter.
Arming terrorists in Pakistan is just the icing on the cake.
Because we didn’t keep 2,000 peace-time troops in country.
But at least Old Joe paid off your student loans.
Oh, wait…
[three]
A massive seaweed blob bigger than the U.S. (you read that correctly) is threatening Florida’s tourism season.
Barnes and his colleagues at USF’s Optical Oceanography Laboratory track sargassum blooms. The blanket of seaweed appears to be growing each year, but 2018 and 2022 had the largest blooms, he said. This year could top last year’s record.
“Historically, as far back as we have records, sargassum has been a part of the ecosystem, but the scale now is just so much bigger,” Barnes told NBC News. “What we would have thought was a major bloom five years ago is no longer even a blip.”
Scientists have found that climate change is causing ocean temperatures to rise, creating a more ideal environment for the algae to thrive. Meanwhile, urban and agriculture runoff is sending nitrates from fertilizers and other nutrients flowing into the ocean, feeding the bloom.
“You have the Congo, the Amazon, the Orinoco, the Mississippi — the largest rivers on the planet, which have been affected by things like deforestation, increasing fertilizer use and burning biomass,” LaPointe told NBC News. “All of that is increasing the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers and so we’re now seeing these blooms as kind of a manifestation of the changing nutrient cycles on our planet.”
[four]
Former VP Mike Pence, who’s obviously gearing up for a Presidential run, took shots at former President Trump during a white-tie dinner with the media this week.
Politico reports:
“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.”
But his advisers saw the Gridiron dinner as an opportunity not just to echo those sentiments but to amplify them. They also believed it would help Pence win over his most skeptical audience these days: Washington insiders and journalists who have given him short shrift in the early 2024 primary.
Pence world has long believed that the former congressman and Indiana governor could occupy the adult-in-a-room 2024 lane, in that he is uniquely positioned to speak truth to power now that he is free of the constraints of the vice presidency.
“Mike is in a different place where he can be sort of free and liberated in ways that I don’t think others in the field are,” Short said. “And so I’m not looking at it as to where he is at this moment. I believe that he’s got a good pathway forward.
In a Republican primary that will likely start with Ron Desantis, Nikki Haley and anti-woke business leader Vivek Ramaswamy (and probably 3-4 more including South Dakota Governor Kristy Noem), it’s tough to make the case as to why Pence could beat out the pack to take on Trump for the nomination…unless you’re on Pence’s staff.
Which is who the quote came from.
Pence wasn’t a national figure when Trump picked him up as VP in 2016, and a couple of shots at the former POTUS just doesn’t change the fact that this guy isn’t a star.
[five]
Finally, the bank failures will likely reverse the interest rate hikes that the Fed has been pushing to cool inflation…which were pushing the economy towards recession (intentionally, to bring prices back down).
U.S. consumer price increases eased slightly from January to February but still pointed to an elevated inflation rate that is posing a challenge for the Federal Reserve at a delicate moment for the financial system.
The government said Tuesday that prices increased 0.4% last month, just below January’s 0.5% rise. Yet excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core prices rose 0.5% in February, slightly above January’s 0.4% gain. The Fed pays particular attention to the core measure as a gauge of underlying inflation pressures.
Even though prices are rising much faster than the Fed wants, some economists expect the central bank to suspend its year-long streak of interest rate hikes when it meets next week. With the collapse of two large banks since Friday fueling anxiety about other regional banks, the Fed, for now, may focus more on boosting confidence in the financial system than on its long-term drive to tame inflation.
That is a sharp shift from just a week ago, when Chair Jerome Powell suggested to a Senate committee that if inflation didn’t cool, the Fed could raise its benchmark interest rate by a substantial half-point at its meeting March 21-22. When the Fed raises its key rate, it typically leads to higher rates on mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and many business loans.
Until the next one,
-sth