No Confidence Votes for everyone

If any banking officials have confidence in Janet Yellen's abilities, that's news. She got ripped to shreds during Thursday's Senate Finance Committee hearing.

Secretary Yellen sai "Our banking system remains sound and Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them." Why would people trust someone that's obviously having this much difficulty answering questions?

A Treasury Secretary that had this little command of the issues is, in my estimation, in over her head. That's far too important of a position to have someone that's that unsteady. Secretary Yellen doesn't inspire confidence.

That's before questioning San Francisco Fed Chief Mary Daly. Daly's responsibility "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." Apparently, "Daly had other priorities, including climate change, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, inequities between blacks and whites, LGBTQ+ rights and a host of other woke social-justice issues that had nothing to do with banking and finance." Supervising SVB's affairs wasn't a priority for her. That's odd since that was her responsibility.

Then there's Joe Biden. Biden's supposed area of expertise was foreign policy. Now he's forced to sound authoritative on banking. It isn't a pretty sight:

President Joe Biden spoke out Monday morning in an effort to reassure Americans there is no need for panic after federal agencies stepped in following the failures of two big banks over the weekend. "Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe. Your deposits are safe. Let me also assure you, we will not stop at this. We'll do whatever is needed," Biden said from the White House.

Now that more shoes have dropped, there's reason to worry. Here's Biden's attempt to reassure people:

Notice the famous Biden retreat after reading a prepared statement rather than answering difficult questions. Here's part of Biden's statement:

"Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them," he continued. "Second, the management of these banks will be fired. If the bank is taken over by FDIC, the people running the bank should not work there anymore."

"Third, investors in the banks will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk, and when the risk didn't pay off, investors lose their money. That's how capitalism works. And fourth, are important questions of how these banks got into the circumstance in the first place. We must get the full accounting of what happened and why those responsible can be held accountable," he said.

"Unfortunately, the last administration rolled back some of these requirements. I'm going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks, to make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again, and to protect American jobs and small businesses," Biden said.

Biden and Yellen aren't singing off the same sheet. Yellen told Sen. Lankford that everyone's account at SVB, even those potentially held by the Chinese, would be made whole. Biden said "investors in the banks will not be protected. They knowingly took a risk, and when the risk didn't pay off, investors lose their money. That's how capitalism works." That's quite the disparity, big enough to drive a Mack truck through with room to spare.

There's something you should know about that last cheap shot. Barney Frank vehemently disagreed with Biden, saying "The regulator who took the lead in closing Signature Bank was the financial regulator appointed for the state of New York. Their authority was in no way affected by the 2018 increase in the level of banks subject to the closest supervision. So whatever the regulator in New York decided to do could have been done before. But secondly, I was on the board of Signature both before and after..." This is the co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act. Frank drove a stake through the heart of Biden's statement when he said "Their authority was in no way affected by the 2018 increase in the level of banks subject to the closest supervision. So whatever the regulator in New York decided to do could have been done before."

The guy who wrote the bill is the guy who is as partisan as any politician. He readily admits that the reforms to Dodd-Frank made no difference.