WASHINGTON D.C. – On Wednesday, U.S. Representative Wiley Nickel (NC-13) participated in a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Federal regulators’ response to recent bank failures.
The hearing included panel testimony from Martin J. Gruenberg, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Michael S. Barr, Vice Chairman of Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; and Nellie Liang, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Treasury Department.
During the hearing, Representative Nickel emphasized the importance of taking action to avoid defaulting on the nation’s debt, pressed the Federal Reserve on recent bank failures, and spoke in support of First Citizens Bank’s successful acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank.
“People in my district are already living paycheck to paycheck and they’re worried about making ends meet. They’re already dealing with the rising cost of everyday goods and services. The last thing they need to worry about right now is their bank—or their employer’s bank— failing,” said Rep. Nickel. “That’s why I’m working to provide transparency and accountability to this process. Where were the regulators? I want to know what the bank executives were doing in the months, weeks, days leading up to this failure. My constituents deserve to know that we’re going to hold bank executives accountable and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Oh please, SVB failed because they bought BILLIONS (~52% of total investments) in US treasuries while we had historically low interest rates. They invested in the government and the government crashed the economy by printing a bunch of money because of “muh covid”. That means they bought those at the top of the market at near peak value. When the Fed started raising interest rates those treasuries lost value…A LOT of value. Therefore the Fed, knowing the FDIC only is carrying 1.26% liquidity to cover ALL insured accounts across the country (that’s not even enough to cover the deposits at SVB, let alone any other major bank), they created the Bank Term Funding Program. This promises banks that go under to buy their assets (debt) “on par” (pre-inflation dollar value), which means the dollar takes the hit, and the bank survives. We must end the fed, refuse central banking and let these crooks go under with it, because the road we are on leads to Central Bank Digital Currency, and that is something WE DO NOT WANT. This is government takeover of the banking industry, and they will use bank failures to justify it to the public.