A consortium of 11 giant banks that are ostensibly in competition with one another came together Thursday to bail out one of their own, the California-based First Republic, in order to help stabilize the teetering U.S. financial system. The $30-billion transfer to First Republic by banks including JPMorgan, Citigroup and other banking juggernauts that were…
Author: Tobias Burns
Biden urges Congress to crack down on failed bank executives
President Biden urged Congress on Friday to give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) more power to punish executives in charge of banks that fail and require assistance from the federal government. In a request to Congress, the president said the FDIC should have more authority to take back executives’ pay, levy fines against them…
What you need to know about this week’s banking crisis
Markets and policymakers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the collapse of Silicon Valley and Signature banks last week, fearing a broader international banking crisis. Concerns about the health of First Republic Bank and slew of other regional powerhouses rattled markets for weeks and the troubles facing Credit Suisse added an…
‘Unfortunate and wrong’: Angry taxpayers respond to latest bank bailouts
The alacritous rescue of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank by the federal government over the weekend is getting a cynical and frustrated response from taxpayers. Many of the people who The Hill spoke to for this article are nervous that the financial system could be crashing around them again – and…
Consumer prices rose 6 percent annually in February as inflation eased
The consumer price index (CPI) rose by 0.4 percent in February for an annual increase of 6 percent, right in line with what economists had been expecting, according to data released Tuesday by the Labor Department. The 6-percent annual inflation rate was the lowest yearly price increase since September 2021. It was down from 6.4…
Five things to know about the Silicon Valley Bank takeover
The federal government took over Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) over the weekend and announced it would insure 100 percent of deposits in a bank that caters to venture capitalists and high-tech startups. The Treasury Department announced Sunday night that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) would use its deposit insurance fund to pay back account…
Economy adds 311K jobs in February, unemployment rises to 3.6 percent
The U.S. economy added 311,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate rose to 3.6 percent, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. Economists had been expecting around 225,000 jobs to be added in February and for the unemployment rate to remain at 3.4 percent. Despite the strong headline jobs gain, the report…
Here’s what Biden’s 2024 budget does on taxes
President Biden is playing the hits on tax policy in his budget for fiscal year 2024, revisiting a number of Democratic classics proposed by his and previous administrations that are sure to be ignored by Republicans. The proposals include a beefed-up version of the child tax credit (CTC), a boost in the corporate tax rate…
Why ‘sky-high’ job openings are boosting pressure on the Fed to hike rates faster
Following the gangbusters January jobs report and eight consecutive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. job market is still punching above its weight and pushing the central bank toward faster rate hikes. The job openings and labor turnover survey released Wednesday by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed there…
Biden releases plan to keep Medicare solvent for another 25 years
President Biden is proposing to extend the solvency of the Medicare national healthcare program by 25 years with an increased tax rate on high earners. The proposal, unveiled Tuesday morning, would fund the program into the 2050s by increasing the Medicare tax rate from 3.8 to 5 percent for households making more than $400,000 a…