Free Republic

Here comes the panic. Bloomberg just reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – who was singlehandedly responsible for stoking and restarting the bank crisis on Wednesday which until that day was easing back, with her comments that nobody in charge was even talking about a uniform deposit insurance, let alone working on one – will convene the heads of top US financial regulators Friday morning for a previously unscheduled meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The meeting will be closed to the public, the Treasury Department said in a statement. The Treasury didn’t say what time the meeting would...

Wokeness has replaced competence and merit across the banking sector, and San Francisco Fed Chief Mary Daly is the poster child of this pernicious trend. A protege of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and short-list candidate for Federal Reserve vice chair, Daly was supposed to be supervising Silicon Valley Bank but apparently was too busy playing politics and pushing woke agendas to regulate rogue banks like SVB, the second-biggest bank failure on record. ... Daly missed all the warning signs of runaway inflation, which led to the steep interest-rate hikes that made SVB’s investments worthless. ... she said inflation didn’t affect...

Silicon Valley Bank dished out $219 million worth of loans to officers, directors and principal shareholders in the months before it collapsed. The money was handed it out in the final quarter of 2022 and was three times higher than the amount borrowed by insiders in the three months before, marking a two-decade record high. It comes as the San Francisco Federal Reserve boss Mary Daly has felt the wrath of both Democrats and Republicans for her failure to act on signs of weakness at the bank, which caved on March 10. The unusually high number of loans is documented...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday decided to break up Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and hold two separate auctions for its traditional deposits unit and its private bank after failing to find a buyer for the failed lender last week. It will seek bids for Silicon Valley Private Bank until March 22 and for the bridge bank until March 24. The private bank, which is housed within SVB's retail operations, caters to high net-worth individuals. Bank and non-bank financial firms will be allowed to bid on the asset portfolios, the regulator said. ... First Citizens said in a statement...

Reports of a possible share sale, and a second ratings downgrade deeper into 'junk' status, has First Republic trading firmly lower Monday. Frist Republic (FRC) - Get Free Report shares extended declines Monday, and look set to open at an all-time low, following a second credit rating downgrade for troubled San Francisco-based lender over the weekend.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th biggest bank in the country, many are left wondering what went wrong. Both current and former employees have stated that the bank’s support of remote work is a contributing factor. Axios reports that current and former employees of Silicon Valley bank have mentioned the bank’s support of remote work as a contributing factor to its recent collapse. SVB stood out in the banking sector for its commitment to remote work. “If our time working remotely has taught us anything, it’s that we can trust our employees to...

Silicon Valley Bank failed just 14 days after KPMG LLP gave the lender a clean bill of health. Signature Bank went down 11 days after the accounting firm signed off on its audit. What KPMG knew about the two banks’ financial situation and what it missed will likely be the subject of regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits. KPMG signed the audit report for Silicon Valley Bank’s parent, SVB Financial Group SIVB Regulators seized the bank on March 10 after a surge of withdrawals threatened to leave it short of cash. “Common sense tells you that an auditor issuing a clean report,...

Some 186 financial institutions in the United States are vulnerable to a collapse if uninsured depositors seek to withdraw their funds, according to a study from analysts with the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research comes shortly after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, where the vast majority of accounts exceeded the $250,000 threshold guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Financial authorities scrambled to back all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank such that the remainder of the financial system, in which roughly half of deposits surpass $250,000, would remain safeguarded against bank runs. Silicon Valley Bank had...

Americans need to have an important discussion about free speech now — before the Censorship Complex makes it impossible to do so. The Censorship Complex — whereby Big Tech censorship is induced by the government, media, and media-rating businesses — threatens the future of free speech in this country. To understand how and why, Americans need to talk about speech — and the government’s motive to deceive the public. To frame this discussion, consider these hypotheticals: Two American soldiers training Ukraine soldiers in Poland cross into the war zone, ambushing and killing five Russian soldiers. Unbeknownst to the American soldiers,...

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...

In the hours after some of Silicon Valley Bank’s biggest customers started pulling out their money, a WhatsApp group of startup founders who are immigrants of color ballooned to more than 1,000 members. Questions flowed as the bank’s financial status worsened. Some desperately sought advice: Could they open an account at a larger bank without a Social Security Number? Others questioned whether they had to physically be at a bank to open an account, because they’re visiting parents overseas. One clear theme emerged: a deep concern about the broader impact on startups led by people of color. While Wall Street...

The next logical step is for the government to insure all bank deposits, which is tantamount to nationalizing the entire banking system. But to what end? A collection of seemingly random crises can spell out a sinister “conspiracy theory” when you consider their connections and where they are leading. An overplayed plot? Perhaps, but how many so-called conspiracy theories have proven to be reality recently? First, the world economy shut down with the COVID lockdown. Manufacturing stopped and capital construction projects were put on hold. No one was making anything, and consumers were buying very little. The government injected huge...

One entrepreneur says the bank was offering ‘basically subprime business loans.’ ... If government funds it, they will come. That’s an overlooked story line in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. If Washington wants to point fingers, it should aim the biggest digit at itself. ... We serve those creating positive environmental change,” SVB’s website brags, noting that the bank worked with some 1,550 companies in the “climate technology and sustainability sector.” Most of these companies weren’t filling some vital market need. Rather .. SVB was beloved for its willingness to offer “banking services to startups that often weren’t profitable,...

The vast majority of Americans believe U.S. companies should hire executives based solely on merit, character and quality, according to a CRC Research poll shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Among respondents, 87% supported a merit-based approach, compared to 8% who supported a quota system for race and gender and 5% who were unsure or refused to answer, according to the CRC Research poll conducted for the 85 Fund. The pattern held true across political affiliations, with most Democrats, Republicans and independents favoring a merit-based hiring approach for executives. At 93%, Republicans were only slightly more likely to...

Bankers in Israel were able to successfully transfer $1 billion in funds from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) right before it collapsed on Friday, according to reports. The Times of Israel is reporting that the country’s two largest banks, Bank Leumi and Bank Hapoalim, were able to move the money before it was seized by the feds. The funds were transferred to bank accounts in Israel.

Nearly 200 more banks may be vulnerable to the same type of risk that took down Silicon Valley Bank: The value of the assets they hold. There are 186 banks across the country that could fail if half of their depositors quickly withdraw their funds, a new study published on the Social Science Research Network found. Even insured depositors — those with $250,000 or less in the bank — could have problems getting their cash if these institutions face the sort of run that Silicon Valley saw a week ago. The concern is that these banks hold a significant amount...

Is there anything more Soviet than a bank that lends money to companies making things no one wants to buy? That's the missing puzzle piece on why Silicon Valley Bank went belly up, and Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal has found it: the failure of the bank was premised on ESG, which descended into wokester lending priorities, creating the abnormal conditions that left the bank ripe for a meltdown. Strassel: Most of these companies weren’t filling some vital market need. Rather, as the Journal reported, SVB was beloved for its willingness to offer “banking services to startups that...

The British arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) has handed out millions of pounds in employee bonuses just days after its insolvency was averted through a Bank of England-orchestrated rescue deal. Sky News has learnt that the payouts to staff including its senior executives were signed off by HSBC, SVB UK's new owner, earlier this week. Sources described the bonus pool as "modest", and said it totalled between £15m and £20m. It was unclear on Saturday how much had been awarded to Erin Platts, the UK bank's chief executive or her senior colleagues. One insider said the bonus payments...

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign stated they would return political donations tied to the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, according to USA Today. The DNC told the publication that the money would be returned following last week’s bank collapse. The announcement was made the same day the bank’s parent company, SVB Financial Group, filed for Chapter 11 protection in New York bankruptcy court.