Author: Tobias Burns

Here’s why the ‘too big to fail’ banks bailed out First Republic

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…