Hi Friend, Headlines over the last week have been dominated by the stunning fall of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and the Biden administration’s efforts to contain the fallout. One of the questions now is whether it will be enough to avoid tipping the economy into the recession economists have been fearing for months. It’s a question that hung over George H.W. Bush’s presidency more than 30 years ago. Bush 41 oversaw the savings and loan crisis, where numerous savings and loan institutions collapsed as the economy cooled after the boom years of the 1980s. One of the culprits of the S&L crisis was the Federal Reserve dramatically raising interest rates to try to combat inflation. Back then, the higher interest rates led fewer people to borrow money from their savings and loan institutions, reducing revenue and causing many of these institutions to go under. In early 1990s, the U.S. dipped into its first recession in nearly a decade, and even the soaring approval ratings President Bush enjoyed after the First Gulf War eventually plummeted as the economy failed to recover in a timely manner heading into the 1992 election. In his annual letter to investors published this week, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink suggested the current turmoil could eventually lead to the “slow roll” of bank closures during the S&L crisis: “We don’t know yet whether the consequences of easy money and regulatory changes will cascade throughout the U.S. regional banking sector (akin to the S&L Crisis) with more seizures and shutdowns coming.” There’s plenty of other comparisons to make between Bush 41 and Biden 46. Similarities | 
