Free Republic

Bud Light's vice president of marketing discussed in a recent interview how she was inspired to update the "fratty" and "out of touch" humor of the beer company with inclusivity. Alissa Heinerscheid did an interview with the podcast "Make Yourself At Home" on March 30, where she discussed her work in transforming the Bud Light brand. "I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to...

The Biden administration quietly inserted itself into a private patent infringement lawsuit two biotech companies filed against COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, in a move experts said could establish a dangerous precedent. In a surprise filing last month, U.S. Attorney David Weiss issued a "statement of interest" in the case on behalf of the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), invoking a rarely-used early 1900s law to argue that the federal government should take on any liability for patent infringement Moderna may be guilty of related to the development of its COVID-19 vaccine. "Where, as here,...

Banking is an inherently risky business. It's assets are mostly long term--loans, mortgages, and bonds. It's liabilities are mostly short term--checking and savings deposits. This timing imbalance relies on the faith of its depositors that the bank is sound. This faith can be shaken by the unwise or unlucky decisions made in how the bank invests the money entrusted to it. This past week, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) suffered a loss of faith. Instead of investing $73 million of its deposits in income earning assets, it gave this money away to Black Lives Matter-related social justice groups. It made...

One of the benefits of being a Washington insider, from the president of the United States to the lowliest bureaucrat, is never having to admit your policies are wrong. In the case of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) - the nation's 10th largest - the financial policy chickens of this, and previous administrations, have predictably come home to roost. Record debt, massive new spending, and the failure of regulators to see what was coming contributed to the run on SVB. It didn't help that in 2018 President Donald Trump signed the biggest rollback of Dodd-Frank bank regulations since the global financial...

This week, a lot of attention has been focused on the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank. It is, in fact, a story of faulty accounting practices, poor government oversight, and the effects of government micromanaging markets at the same time that it fails in its oversight responsibilities. And you will be paying for it. Accounting ShenanigansOver at the Wall Street Journal, William L. Silber explains this better than anyone, and in terms anyone who ever purchased a government bond can understand. They are safe. The problem is liquidity:SVB held tens of billions of dollars in long-term government bonds. On...

Strange days, indeed. Despite endless promises from Washington DC that there would never be another bank bailout, the Biden Administration bailed out Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) by removing the $250,000 cap on deposit insurance. Then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen added that in the future, only banks that posed SYSTEMIC RISK to the economy will be bailed out. Translation: only the big four Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks will be bailed out. Meaning that the Biden Administration prefers big banks to community banks. “Middle-class Joe” loves BIG Pharma, BIG defense, BIG tech, BIG media and now BIG banks. He should...

Credit Suisse, the global investment bank based in Switzerland, would be six feet under today if not for the $54 billion bailout it just got from the Swiss central bank. I'm starting to see a pattern in these failing banks… see tweet https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1636353368644886528?

Americans can’t afford food, but leftist and Chinese companies get bailed out. Silicon Valley Bank spent billions on green energy, millions on Black Lives Matter and other leftist causes, until it finally ran out of ‘other people’s money’. That’s when the Biden administration decided to bail out its depositors. At a dinner hosted by Peter Orszag, Obama’s former budget director, Wally Adeyemo, Obama’s Nigerian assistant treasury secretary and Biden’s deputy treasury secretary, chatted with Blair Effron, an influential Biden donor, serving on Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board, who had been hired as an advisor by SVB to deal with its financial...

We knew this was the endgame more than two weeks ago when we reported that "Credit Suisse Crashes To All Time Low After Boosting Deposit Rates To Reverse Bank Run" in which we reported that after a quarter of "staggering" bank runs, the second largest Swiss bank - clearly panicking - was offering a 6.5% annual rate on new three-month deposits of $5 million or above - and a rate as high as 7% for one-year deposits - far above matched maturity Bills, and suggesting that to attract a client, the bank is forced to eat a loss.The hope, we...

SVB collapse an indictment against Biden brand of politics Where do I go to get my free money? Why must you and I and millions of other Americans who work for a living bail out the Beautiful People who foolishly stashed their cash in Silicon Valley Bank? Wasn’t the deal that you had to keep your balance under $250,000 to be protected by FDIC insurance? I guess that rule wasn’t in effect if you were woke, a member of a protected class or contributed enough to Democrat fat cats, or all of the above. Here’s how America works now. If...

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., joined forces with 18 GOP governors to reject President Joe Biden's environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) "agenda," claiming the push is a "direct threat" to the economic freedom of American retirees. Governors in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming formed the alliance Thursday in what they described as an effort to ensure American retirement funds are not used for "woke" investments. "Yet again, President Biden put his political agenda above the wellbeing and individual freedoms of hardworking Americans,"...

the rush to rescue depositors of Silicon Valley Bank .., a bank directly associated with Silicon Valley, which he terms as the "Democratic stronghold of the world," is as big a "crony payoff as you possibly can have.".. the Silicon Valley Bank is enjoying a charmed life because it's in Silicon Valley," ... "It's the Democratic stronghold of the world. And 99% of their people are probably Democrats and depositors that raised hell they're all democratic donors, so this is as crony a payoff as you possibly can have." ... Morris's statement comes after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen proclaimed .....

Credit Suisse Group AG said it would borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs, equivalent to $53.7 billion, from the Swiss central bank to shore up its liquidity, capping a day in which fears about the health of global banks leapfrogged to Europe from North America and the giant lender’s shares dropped as much as 24%. The bank also said it would repurchase $3 billion worth of senior debt whose value has plunged along with the perceived health of banks on both sides of the Atlantic. The Zurich firm stressed in a press release issued in the evening in New...

About half the start-ups working to develop and scale up the newest clean energy technologies were banking with [SVB]...It was the go-to bank for clean tech start-ups...Before the collapse, the bank boasted that it financed or helped finance 62 percent of community solar projects in America.

In the wake of two bank failures, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury announced a bank bailout program that could be dubbed “QE Extra Lite.”Last week, Silicon Valley Bank was shuttered by federal authorities after the bank suffered significant losses selling bonds in order to raise capital. When that news hit, depositors rushed to pull funds from the bank, making it functionally insolvent. Then over the weekend, federal authorities shut down Signature Bank.On Sunday, the FDIC created “bridge banks” to handle both insured and uninsured customer deposits. Banking regulators assured depositors that they would have full access to all...

The Silicon Valley Bank failure (along with NY’s Signature Bank) are sending shock waves through the global economy. Not because of the incompetence of bank regulators, but because of the reaction function from the FDIC and Fed. The 10-year Treasury yield is down -26 basis points in the AM. And the Fed Funds Target Rate is expected to drop to 4.7%. Its not just the US Treasury yield that declined -26 basis points. European sovereign yields are down too (Germany 10-year is down -32.9 basis points). On a sad note, Resident Biden is calling for stricter regulations for the banking...

Key PointsRegulators approved plans Sunday to backstop both depositors and financial institutions associated with Silicon Valley Bank.Officials will unwind both SVB and Signature Bank, ensuring that depositors will have full access to their funds on Monday.The Federal Reserve stepped in with a separate facility that will provide loans up to one year for institutions affected by the bank failures."Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system," leading regulators said in a joint statement. Banking regulators devised a plan Sunday to backstop depositors with money at Silicon Valley Bank ,...

WASHINGTON — Plans announced Sunday to fully reimburse deposits made in the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank and the shuttered Signature Bank will rely on Wall Street and large financial institutions — not taxpayers — to foot the bill, Treasury officials said. “For the banks that were put into receivership, the FDIC will use funds from the Deposit Insurance Fund to ensure that all of its depositors are made whole,” said a senior Treasury Department official, who spoke to reporters Sunday about the plan on the condition of anonymity.

The Biden administration said Sunday that it would guarantee all deposits at the now-shuttered Silicon Valley Bank but insisted the move was not a taxpayer-funded bailout, while regulators closed a second institution, New York City’s Signature Bank, amid fears of an unfolding economic crisis. Some business leaders warned that it might be just the beginning of a national reckoning with institutions that value left-wing politics over sound investing.Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seemed earlier Sunday to rule out a bailout of the California-based bank but said the government would work around the clock to find solutions ahead of Monday morning’s opening...

Some Dem tech investors who have spent millions of dollars currying favor with the Biden administration are furious about what they call the White House’s utter lack of help over the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. One of the deep-pocketed venture capitalists told The Post that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s statement Sunday throwing cold water on the possibility of a bailout was “pathetic.” Others said that unlike the financial crisis of 2008, when bankers and government officials were in constant dialogue, there doesn’t appear to even have been much communication to date between the administration and Silicon Valley as to...