Yellen to say US banking system ‘remains sound’ after Silicon Valley collapseWhen she appears before the Senate finance committee this morning, Janet Yellen’s job will be to tell lawmakers that, despite the dramatic bank collapses of the past week, the America financial system is in good shape.
“I can reassure the members of the Committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” the secretary will say, according to prepared testimony published by the Associated Press.
Senators have their own job, and that’s to get as much information out of Yellen as possible. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren is one of Wall Street’s biggest foes in Congress, and will likely demand the secretary’s opinions on whether regulations that were repealed in 2018 would have prevented the collapses.
“It’s time to put those regulations back in place,” she told Boston’s WBZ yesterday, adding that it was time to “send a very strong message to bank CEOs – you’re not going to be able to load up on risk in order to juice your profits.”
Senator James Lankford, meanwhile, epitomized the concerns of many Republicans earlier this week when he complained that the US government’s actions to help the California bank appear to be a bailout funded by a fee on other financial institutions.
“Banks in Oklahoma in rural towns are about to pay a special fee to be able to bail out millionaires in San Francisco. Now, what Oklahoma banks and bankers had to do with that bank failure in San Francisco, I have no idea,” he said on the Senate floor.
It’s worth noting that the hearing itself is not specifically about the bank collapse, but rather Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal, which contains his administration’s priorities but has no chance of being enacted as written.
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Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has started her testimony before the Senate finance committee, where the administration’s response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the wider health of the financial system are on the agenda.
Follow along at the live stream at the top of the page.
House Republicans plan their own January 6 investigationFirst there was the January 6 insurrection, then there was the congressional committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection, and now there will be a committee to investigate the committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.
As the Guardian reported last week, Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican who was accused after the insurrection of giving tours of the Capitol building just before it was stormed, will chair the committee convened by the GOP leadership of the House of Representatives. In a new interview with CBS News, he said the panel will probe the security failures that led to the Capitol breach, as well as the congressional investigation that took place in the last Congress.
“What I’d like to do is show what really happened on Jan 6,” Loudermilk said, meaning, “Where was the security failure and why were we not ready?”
The top Democrat on the committee will be Norma Torres, who is no fan of what the GOP has set out to do.
“I think it’s obscene to go back and try to redo the work of a bipartisan committee that was very focused on learning what happened,” she told CBS.
“It serves no purpose other than if you are an insurrectionist or if you support an insurrectionist and want to portray a different story than what truly happened that day.”
The January 6 insurrection is popular among Republicans, a new poll shows, perhaps not surprisingly. Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly with the story:
More than a quarter of Republicans approve of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to a new poll. More than half think the deadly riot was a form of legitimate political discourse.
The Economist and YouGov survey said 27% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat approved of the riot on 6 January 2021, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.
Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the attack. More than 1,000 people have been arrested and hundreds convicted.
The longest sentence yet handed down is 10 years in prison, to a former New York police officer who assaulted Capitol officers. The statutory maximum sentence for seditious conspiracy, the most serious convictions yet secured, is 20 years.
The Senate will vote today on repealing the legal authorizations behind America’s conflicts with Iraq, including the invasion 20 year ago. The Guardian’s Julian Borger reports on how the war in Iraq destabilized US politics, and set the stage for Donald Trump’s rise:
Twenty years ago, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski was working as a desk officer in the Pentagon, when she became aware of a secretive new department called the Office of Special Plans.
The OSP had been set up to produce the kind of intelligence that the Bush administration wanted to hear, about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Kwiatkowski, then age 42, saw first-hand how the disastrous war was confected.
“I had this huge faith in my superiors, that they must be there for a reason, they must be wise and strong and all of these fairytale type things, but I came to find out there are very incompetent people in very high positions,” she said.
Yellen to say US banking system ‘remains sound’ after Silicon Valley collapseWhen she appears before the Senate finance committee this morning, Janet Yellen’s job will be to tell lawmakers that, despite the dramatic bank collapses of the past week, the America financial system is in good shape.
“I can reassure the members of the Committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” the secretary will say, according to prepared testimony published by the Associated Press.
Senators have their own job, and that’s to get as much information out of Yellen as possible. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren is one of Wall Street’s biggest foes in Congress, and will likely demand the secretary’s opinions on whether regulations that were repealed in 2018 would have prevented the collapses.
“It’s time to put those regulations back in place,” she told Boston’s WBZ yesterday, adding that it was time to “send a very strong message to bank CEOs – you’re not going to be able to load up on risk in order to juice your profits.”
Senator James Lankford, meanwhile, epitomized the concerns of many Republicans earlier this week when he complained that the US government’s actions to help the California bank appear to be a bailout funded by a fee on other financial institutions.
“Banks in Oklahoma in rural towns are about to pay a special fee to be able to bail out millionaires in San Francisco. Now, what Oklahoma banks and bankers had to do with that bank failure in San Francisco, I have no idea,” he said on the Senate floor.
It’s worth noting that the hearing itself is not specifically about the bank collapse, but rather Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal, which contains his administration’s priorities but has no chance of being enacted as written.
Lawmakers to grill Treasury secretary over regulations, ‘bailouts’ after bank failuresGood morning, US politics blog readers. It seems like the American banking system is out of the woods for the moment, after coming very close to a crisis at the start of this week when the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other financial institutions sparked fears of a wave of insolvencies. We’re going to hear more about how that crisis was averted (at least for now) from Treasury secretary Janet Yellen beginning at 10 am eastern time, when she speaks before the Senate finance committee. Democrats will undoubtedly press her on whether tighter regulations could have stopped the bank’s collapse, while Republicans are expected to demand answers on whether Washington’s steps to stop its depositors from losing money constitute a bailout.
Here’s what else is happening today:
The Senate will convene at 10 am today to vote on repealing the legal authorizations behind the Iraq war, 20 years after the American invasion.
White Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 2 pm.
Kamala Harris is in Iowa to discuss the Biden administration’s efforts to protect reproductive healthcare.