1) A New Alliance Between Unions and…the Communist Party?
We called your attention to the bad news that this week Michigan will become the first state in some 50 years to repeal a right-to-work law. Every Democrat in the legislature voted to strip away a worker’s right to choose. (Now Michigan workers will be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment.)
We were struck by this tweet from the American Communist Party celebrating the “victory” for workers.
What’s sadly ironic is that throughout all of the 20th century the unions in America – despite their many other flaws – were staunch anti-communists. It was Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader representing miners who heroically stood up to the communist tyrants who wouldn’t allow unions and the right of workers to collectively bargain. Reagan and the unions worked together to liberate workers and defeat Communism.
We now apparently have a compact between the modern-day Communists and the AFL-CIO. Talk about making a deal with the devil.
3) Guess Who’s One of the Biggest Beneficiaries of the Fed’s Bailout
Gavin Newsom speaking at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco, California, by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY 3.0
California Governor Gavin Newsom freely admits – he even boasts – that he lobbied “the highest levels of leadership at the White House and Treasury" for SVB help. He is thrilled at the Fed’s bailout: “Their actions this weekend have calmed nerves.” None more than his own nerves.
The Intercept reports that Newsom has extensive personal ties to SVB that he hasn’t bothered to disclose. He has an account at the bank and ties to three private wineries that are top SVB customers. His wife is a co-founder of the non-profit California Partners Project, which has an account with the bank and has gotten a $100,000 donation from it. John China, an SVB executive, sits on the board of the Partners Project.
California bans public officials from potentially influencing decisions when they have a “financial interest,” and the White House isn’t saying if Newsom disclosed his ties to the bank. Even if he DID disclose this, he should have recused himself because of his clear conflict of interest.
Newsom has a history of being sloppy about ethics – recall his flouting of a ban on indoor dining at a posh Napa Valley restaurant and the time he packed his kids off to a summer camp where many of the kids weren’t wearing masks in violation of a state requirement.
Yet, Democrats are holding him up as a top candidate for the White House – apparently because he stands up for the little guy.
Larry explains that the problem was supervisory, not regulatory:
SVB and the other banks are supervised by the San Francisco Fed, which is run by Mary Daly. It was completely asleep at the switch. First Republic bank also comes under Ms. Daly’s purview.
What were they doing while these banks were taking cheap money deposits and investing in long-term duration government and mortgage bonds? The management of risk by these banks was a catastrophe, and it had been going on for well over a year. So where was Ms. Daly and her team of bank examiners?
Then you read about a $5 billion one-chunk investment in some kind of climate fund that was completely untested and who knows what other left-wing romping was going on in these woke banks. By the way, Ms. Daly is considered to be quite a wokester herself.
House Financial Services Committee chairman, Patrick McHenry, should haul Ms. Daly and other regional Fed bank heads in front of his committee and find out what the heck they were doing while these banks were going crazy.
