This is a post from Michael Hudson. It will be posted later today on his site https://michael-hudson.com/, but the site admin is in Australia, and won’t be up for several hours. Since this is a fast moving story, Michael wanted his info up ASAP, hence this cross post. I do recommend that people follow Michael … Continue reading "Why the Banking System is Breaking Up"
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An educational controversy Let’s break it down, my swing dance instructor used to say. We learned more complex moves not by watching him and his partner perform them over and over at music speed and trying to memorize the whole. We learned the move by reducing their actions to component parts. Do this, then this, then that. Where to put your weight on which foot. When to shift it — more subtle stuff than the eye could catch. I’m old. I learned to read decades earlier the same way with phonics. But sometime between then and now, the “whole word” method took hold. It’s been controversial. Controversial enough that the Washington Post Editorial Board saw fit to address it in its Sunday editorial: The so-called reading wars have been raging for decades now, sometimes pitting teachers against publishers or publishers against academicians — and also sometimes, as too many things do these days, pitting progressives against conservatives or Democrats against Republicans.
VC billionaires demand bailout … for the little people In the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, the squealing from the venture capitalist community will not stop until they get theirs. Of course, that’s not how they’re selling their demands. But as with the 2008 financial collapse, the Randian elites are covering their own asses first. Axios: Silicon Valley Bank on Friday paid out annual bonuses to eligible U.S. employees, just hours before the bank was seized by the U.S. government, Axios has learned from multiple sources. What to know: The bonuses were for work done during 2022, and were previously scheduled to be disbursed on March 10. That date ultimately coincided with the bank’s takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Anand Giridharadas’ (“Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World“) Twitter feed is filled with the rich advocating for the poor, poor paycheck worker. Giridharadas is still swapping barbs with billionaire Mark Cuban over the SVB bailout demand.
More rugged individualism for thee but not me Watching the fallout from the Silicion Valley Bank failure. (I’m not a financial expert.) “And this isn’t a bailout,” Cuban insists. David Dayen replies: Funny story about #2, Mark. The regulators were watching until 2018, when SVB and other banks lobbied to send the regulators home, and convinced Republicans (and 50 Democrats) to do it. Your favorite people warned that it would go badly. It did. The Lever notes that SVB President Greg Becker lobbied against further oversight of his bank: In 2015, SVB President Greg Becker appeared before a Senate panel to push legislators to exempt more banks — including his own — from new regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite warnings from some senators, Becker’s lobbying effort was ultimately successful.
I’d guess their answer is to force women to have more children by banning abortion and birth control. They take the long view.
They’re nuts These people are brainwashed and delusional. They don’t even know what CRT is but they are convinced that they must save the children from it. It would be sad if it weren’t for the fact that they are being used as willing tools in a nascent (maybe not so nascent) fascist movement. What if there is nothing to panic about? This week, three conservative school board members in a rural Colorado district threatened to resign because of critical race theory. Not because they fear it. But, instead, because they’re sick of the fear-mongering about it. The three board members in Elizabeth, Colorado (population: 1,675), say that critical race theory is not taught in schools, but that community members have brought up the issue relentlessly. At a February 13 school board meeting, Elizabeth High School principal Bret McClendon addressed Rhonda Olsen and Heather Booth, the two school board members who have launched a crusade against CRT, telling them to “stop chasing ghosts.” “We are not teaching critical race theory at Elizabeth High School,” McClendon said, according to the local Elbert County News.
He’s Nixon in high heels He’s very weird: Suzy Barker, a native Iowan dressed in an orange-and-blue University of Florida hoodie, waited in a crowd of fellow Republicans on Friday morning to meet Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. She smiled widely and pointed to her hoodie as she told the governor that her son attended college in his home state. Mr. DeSantis — dressed in a dark blue suit with a light blue, open-collar shirt and black boots — stood on the opposite side of 10 metal bike racks separating him from the crowd. He gave a slight nod to Ms. Barker and told her about his state’s new “grandparent waiver” that gives tuition breaks to out-of-state students whose grandparents are Florida residents. But Ms. Barker, a 50-year-old teacher who had driven about an hour to see the Florida governor in Davenport, does not have any other family in the Sunshine State, and she narrowed her eyes in confusion at his response. Here she was at an event promoting Mr. DeSantis’s new book, shoulder to shoulder with a crush of Iowans eager for face time with the anti-“woke” darling of right-wing America, and he was talking waivers. Mr.
It appears that Donald Trump may be on the verge of indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Philip Bump has all the details: The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) has extended an unwelcome invitation to former president Donald Trump: come offer testimony before a grand jury probing his business. In the state of New York, potential targets of criminal investigations can request the opportunity to offer testimony to a grand jury, an alert that can serve as a sort of early-warning flag for potential indictments. Trump, like most of those who are invited to testify before possible indictment, is unlikely to actually show up for questioning. But the invitation itself suggests that Bragg’s office may be close to actually filing criminal charges. One possible focus of an indictment is the 2016 payment of $130,000 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels facilitated by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen. The focus of a grand jury’s work is sealed, but both The Washington Post and the New York Times have reported that the hush-money payment is a likely focal point of the probe.
For real… Don’t be surprised if they propose invading as well. After all, their hero Vladimir did it: As the war in Ukraine rages on, former President Donald Trump and the MAGA right have presented their opposition to continued aid to Ukraine as a position grounded in antiwar principles. Trump’s inner circle is reportedly going so far as to push the narrative that Trump is the “peace president” in the 2024 White House race. Yet at the same time, right-wing nationalists are displaying an increasing appetite for launching a new war altogether — in Mexico. It’s a bizarre, disconcerting development, and a reminder that right-wing nationalists’ aversion to backing Ukraine isn’t based on a commitment to minimizing the harm caused by war. It is in reality a reluctance to use force that doesn’t more narrowly advance perceived U.S. interests. Let’s be clear: It is not a good idea to send missiles or troops into Mexico to deal with the fentanyl problem. It is a violation of national sovereignty.
High-flying risk-takers demand their bailout Christopher Walken’s first movie role was in The Anderson Tapes, a 1971 Sidney Lumet caper film starring Sean Connery. Walken played “The Kid,” a junior safecracker. Connery’s team of thieves robs a high-end New York apartment building. It’s Oscars weekend. But that’s not the reason for mentioning the film. When Walken can’t break into a safe in one rich couple’s apartment. ‘Duke’ Anderson (Connery) demands the combination. The man refuses. Duke yanks up the man’s wife by the hair. (I can’t get the clip to load.) “Darling, it’s all right,” the man tells her calmly. “Just hold on. It just hurts right now, but you’ll be all right.” “You bastard!” she shouts. “Tell him!” He doesn’t, so Duke calls in his hitter, “Socks,” points to the rich jerk, and says, “Him!” Threatened with pain himself, the guy folds up like tissue paper. Fiction? Watch how rich libertarians behaved when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday.