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Don’t expect any major breakthroughs from the White House talks. Republicans want to reduce the country’s $31.4 trillion debt through spending cuts, while the White House views tax increases on companies and wealthy Americans as the best way to reduce the burden. In 2011, the S&P 500 fell when S&P Global, the ratings agency, downgraded the nation’s credit rating a few days after the Obama administration and Republicans reached a deal. This year, investors seem to be betting that lawmakers will reach a last-minute agreement, or at least temporarily lift the debt ceiling (Mr. McHenry didn’t rule this out). Despite a banking crisis and recession fears, the S&P 500 is up 8 percent in 2023.

☆ Lawmakers praise First Republic sale, but efforts to pass new bank rules are fizzling
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Christina Wilkie | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers who sit atop key banking committees praised the federal takeover of First Republic Bank on Monday, and held up the sale of its assets to JP Morgan Chase as a successful public-private collaboration to protect the U.S. financial system. His statement contrasted from the reaction of the Senate banking committee's chairman, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. He did not directly respond to the federal intervention, choosing instead to direct his ire at the failed bank. "First Republic Bank's risky behavior, unique business model, and management failures led to significant problems, and it's clear we need stronger guardrails in place," Brown said in a statement. "We must make large banks more resilient against failure so that we protect financial stability and ensure competition in the long run."

☆ US Fed points finger at Trump-era rollback for SVB demise
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Douglas Gillison | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

According to the Fed, SVB's management bore significant blame and bank examiners also made grave missteps. Randal Quarles, who was appointed to the Fed by President Donald Trump in 2017, oversaw the Fed's bank supervision until his resignation in 2021. Patrick McHenry, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, blasted the Fed report as a "thinly veiled attempt" to justify positions like those of Warren. According to the report, the 2018 law caused the Fed to raise the supervisory threshold for large banks, i.e. those smaller than the "global systemically important banks," to $100 billion in assets from $50 billion -- delaying stricter oversight of SVB "by at least three years."

☆ 'Crypto is dead in America' as US regulators target the sector for threatening the establishment, Chamath Palihapitiya says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Filip De Mott | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Crypto is paying the price for challenging the establishment, Chamath Palihapitiya said. "Crypto is dead in America," the so-called SPAC King said recently on the All-In podcast. "Crypto is dead in America," Palihapitiya said. Recent examples of the SEC's enforcement efforts include a February proposal to stop investment advisors from trading in crypto, and the threat of legal action against a number of Coinbase products. Meanwhile, Palihapitiya also lamented the SEC's enforcement rationale, claiming that it is excessively targeting a company that has a history of being regulation-friendly.

☆ 'Crypto is dead in America,' says longtime bitcoin bull Chamath Palihapitiya
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Mackenzie Sigalos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

"Crypto is dead in America," Palihapitiya said in the latest episode of the All-In podcast. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has said crypto trading platforms should abide by strict U.S. securities laws. "You had Gensler even blaming the banking crisis on crypto," Palihapitiya said. The SEC has ramped up its enforcement of the crypto industry, bearing down on companies and projects that the regulator alleges were selling unregistered securities. In early 2021, Palihapitiya predicted on CNBC that bitcoin would rise from $39,000 at the time to $100,000 and then up to $200,000.

[1/4] A view of the Park Avenue location of the First Republic Bank, in New York City, U.S., March 10, 2023. FDIC regulators had raised the specter of systemic risk from the failure of large regional banks months before the SVB and Signature Bank collapses, records reviewed by Reuters show. SECRETS REVEALEDThe Fed will release its report on SVB at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Friday. FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg has not provided much detail about the supervision of Signature, which like SVB had grown rapidly in recent years. The Fed's inspector general will have a report on each bank in the third quarter.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler was testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee for the first time since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January. Gensler, who has helmed the SEC since April 2021, underscored the agency's rulemaking as "grounded in legal authorities granted by Congress." The SEC also levied record penalties in the last fiscal year and Republican lawmakers seized on the agency's nearly 50 enforcement actions against crypto firms, saying the agency was regulating by enforcement. Gensler maintained most cryptocurrencies are securities and crypto firms must comply with securities laws. Progressive lawmakers and investor advocates have praised the SEC and pushed Congress to give the agency more resources.

WASHINGTON — Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler faced a barrage of criticism from House Republicans on Tuesday over his agency's crackdown on cryptocurrency trading platforms. In more than four hours of testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Gensler stood firm on his view that crypto trading platforms and exchanges should abide by strict U.S. securities laws. "All of these companies should come into compliance with the law, and until they do, we will continue to pursue them as the cop on the beat, and investigate and follow the facts and law," Gensler told the panel. Gensler, however, rejected the notion that crypto trading platforms don't know how to interpret U.S. securities laws. Facing the House committee on Tuesday, Gensler showed little sympathy for the challenges faced by crypto exchanges operating in the U.S."We have a clear regulatory framework built up over 90 years," he said.

☆ SEC's Gensler in congressional hot seat today over climate change and crypto
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Bob Pisani | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. That's because SEC Chair Gary Gensler has aroused the ire of many in corporate America over his 50+ list of new regulatory proposals the SEC is scheduled to vote on this year. "Chair Gensler has identified a range of 50-55 regulatory priorities since the start of his tenure, and has already proposed twice as many rules as his predecessor in just half the time." "The vast majority of crypto tokens are securities," Gensler declared in his written testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. "SEC Chair Gensler is long overdue to testify before the House Financial Services Committee," Rep. French Hill (R.-Ark), Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement released to CNBC.

☆ Republicans want to cut $1 trillion in spending — and instead of introducing 1 bill, they've introduced 500 to do just that
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Ayelet Sheffey | Juliana Kaplan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

GOP lawmakers published over 500 bills on different areas in which they want to cut spending. It comes as Biden has been urging Republicans to put forth a concrete budget. GOP budget chair Jodey Arrington said the budget could take months, and the primary focus should be raising the debt ceiling. Republican lawmakers just made their latest move in the ongoing drama to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending. Now, Republicans have some ideas — or rather, over 500 proposed bills for limiting funding to a slew of federal government programs and agencies.

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The secretive world of Federal Reserve bank supervision has been laid bare by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and critics say it needs an overhaul to make it more nimble, transparent and decisive. Typically, bank supervisors do most of their work behind closed doors. Bank supervision is typically conducted behind closed-doors because of concerns that publicizing bank missteps could spur bank runs and undermine confidence in the overall system. SVB's rapid growth also was a factor for Fed supervisors. Barr said part of his review would look at whether Fed supervision was appropriate for the bank's "rapid growth and vulnerabilities."

House lawmakers tore into top U.S. bank regulators Wednesday, questioning their competency and saying examiners were asleep at the wheel, at a second day of congressional hearings this week about how Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed practically overnight on March 10 and March 12. "We need competent financial supervisors, but Congress can't legislate competence," House Financial Services chairman Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told top officials at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and FDIC at the beginning the hearing. "The light touch cautions from the Fed to SVB management are clearly not what Congress intended for bank supervision," said Waters. Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, Mich., demanded raw, confidential supervisory information about the banks, available to regulators ahead of the collapses. Members of the Republican majority House challenged many of the decisions made by regulators in the hours and days after SVB collapsed and Signature Bank followed 48 hours later.

☆ Rep. Patrick McHenry on SVB hearing
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailRep. Patrick McHenry on SVB hearingRep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss what McHenry plans to ask regulators about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the speed of the withdrawal requests by SVB depositors, and if this instance was a one-off.

"I think that any time you have a bank failure like this, bank management clearly failed, supervisors failed and our regulatory system failed," Michael Barr, Fed Vice Chair for Supervision, told Congress. REPORTS DUE MAY 1Both the Fed and FDIC are is expected to produce reports on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank by May 1. Barr told the House Financial Services Committee that he first became aware of stress at Silicon Valley Bank on the afternoon of March 9, but that the bank reported to supervisors that morning that deposits were stable. Gruenberg of the FDIC told lawmakers he also became aware of SVB's stress that Thursday evening. "(Fed) staff were working with Silicon Valley Bank basically all afternoon and evening and through the morning the next day to pledge as much collateral as humanly possible to the discount (window) on Friday," Barr said.

☆ What to expect from the Senate hearings on recent bank failures
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Silicon Valley Bank’s liquidity crisis and subsequent downfall sent waves of panic through the financial system in early March, setting off a chain reaction of chaos with which regional banks are still grappling. On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee will continue with their own line of questioning. Sen. Brown has called for the executives of Silicon Valley Bank to be held accountable for the bank’s failure. “Our banking system is sound and resilient, with strong capital and liquidity,” Barr said. The failures of SVB and Signature Bank, he wrote, “demonstrate the implications that banks with assets over $100 billion can have for financial stability.

☆ Key lawmakers say upcoming hearings on bank failures aim to boost U.S. confidence in banking sector
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers overseeing the recent turmoil in the banking sector said Wednesday that they aim to increase Americans' confidence in the banking industry after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed over the last two weeks. Regulators and lawmakers are also trying to contain further damage to the economy and reinforce confidence in the banking system. Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, also said writing new laws should take a back seat at the hearings to investigating what happened. We can't legislate that either in the financial sector or among financial institutions management, nor with the regulators." Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and chairman of Senate Banking Committee, compared the SVB collapse to the devastating train crash in East Palestine, Ohio.

WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated on Thursday that she was prepared to take further action to ensure that Americans' bank deposits stay safe amid turmoil in the banking system. Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB.O) was taken over by federal regulators on March 10, followed days later by Signature Bank (SBNY.O). Biden said last week the banking crisis has calmed down, and promised Americans that their deposits are safe. Yellen also said supply chain pressures and shipping costs were coming down and were eventually likely to bring down inflation. Separately on the issue of the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary said that a U.S. debt default would undermine the dollar's reserve currency status and that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would lead to a recession or worse.

☆ Exclusive: Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott, Democrat Warren unveil Fed oversight bill
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( David Morgan | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Elizabeth Warren blamed the collapse of the two banks on regulatory failures at the U.S. central bank, which has operated up to now with an internal inspector general who reports to the Fed board. "Our legislation fixes that by establishing a presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed inspector general at the Fed, like every other major government agency," Scott said in a joint release with Warren. Warren said this month's banking upheavals "have underscored the urgent need for a truly independent inspector general to hold Fed officials accountable for any lapses or wrongdoing." She sits on both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, and chairs subcommittees of both panels. Reporting by David Morgan and Heather Timmons; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ What would a federal expansion of deposit insurance look like?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

That’s the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s standard limit, meaning any bank deposits up to that amount are protected by the independent government agency. But now there’s growing support for raising that insurance cap. A higher insurance cap doesn’t automatically mean banks will be subject to tighter regulations, Dollar noted, but there could be some call for it. The FDIC insurance limit has been raised seven times since 1950 — and $250,000 also isn’t a calculated number, Collins said. In 2008, the FDIC used the same system for temporary unlimited deposit insurance guarantee on certain accounts.

☆ Republicans request Fed and FDIC oversight records for failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Christina Wilkie | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The Federal Reserve also created a Bank Term Funding Program aimed at safeguarding institutions affected by the market instability of the bank failures. In the days following the collapse, reports have emerged indicating that Silicon Valley Bank ignored repeated warnings from bank regulators that the bank would be at risk of collapse in the event that interest rates rose quickly. In it, Brown suggested that responsibility for the bank failures lay in part with top executives at the failed banks. Brown also asked the regulators to "identify and close regulatory gaps, shortfalls, or failures by state or federal regulators that contributed to the banks' failures." He did not ask for the names of individual Fed or FDIC officials involved in supervising the banks.

☆ U.S. lawmakers to examine merits of higher FDIC bank deposit insurance cap
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

"I think that lifting the FDIC insurance cap is a good move," Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, said on CBS's "Face The Nation" program, referring to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's current $250,000 limit per depositor. "What I will do though, legislatively, and in an oversight function, is to determine whether or not we need to address the FDIC deposit level," McHenry told the same CBS program. During the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, the FDIC temporarily backstopped all deposits to safeguard smaller banks. Pressure on midsized and smaller banks from deposit outflows continued on Friday despite a move by several large banks to deposit $30 billion into First Republic Bank, an institution rocked by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. McHenry said he wanted to examine the trade-offs of higher deposit insurance limits, "the moral hazard of having more risk-taking in the financial sector, and also the impact it would have on community banks."

☆ U.S. lawmakers to examine merits of higher bank deposit insurance cap
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( David Lawder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/4] Signs explaining Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and other banking policies are shown on the counter of a bank in Westminster, Colorado November 3, 2009. "I think that lifting the FDIC insurance cap is a good move," Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, said on CBS's "Face The Nation" program, referring to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's current $250,000 limit per depositor. During the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, the FDIC temporarily backstopped all deposits to safeguard smaller banks. Pressure on midsized and smaller banks from deposit outflows continued on Friday despite a move by several large banks to deposit $30 billion into First Republic Bank (FRC.N), an institution rocked by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB.O) and Signature Bank (SBNY.O). McHenry said he wanted to examine the trade-offs of higher deposit insurance limits, "the moral hazard of having more risk taking in the financial sector, and also the impact it would have on community banks."

☆ House committee calls Fed, FDIC officials to testify in its first hearing on bank failures
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

WASHINGTON — The House Financial Services Committee on Friday announced its first hearing on the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The announcement follows President Joe Biden's request to Congress on Friday to allow financial regulators more authority to claw back compensation from executives at failed banks. Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and Ranking Member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said House Financial Services is "committed to getting to the bottom of the failures" of the banks. "As Chairman and Ranking Member, we take our oversight duties seriously. We will conduct this hearing without fear or favor to get the answers the American people deserve."

☆ U.S. House Financial Services chair urges confidence, says financial agencies acting within law
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The FDIC is doing what the FDIC is supposed to do in conformance with the law," Representative Patrick McHenry told CNBC, adding Americans should "have confidence in their financial system." "You have the decisions of the institution, and you have decisions of the supervisors," the Republican committee chairman told Punchbowl late on Monday after briefing Republicans on the matter. His administration stepped in over the weekend to shore up the banks, with the FDIC taking over receivership. Biden also vowed new bank rules after regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis were rolled back under former Republican President Donald Trump. The panel's ranking Democrat, Maxine Waters, on Monday urged bipartisan work to ensure the stability of the financial system.

☆ U.S. House Financial Services chair to seek documents, hold hearing amid bank collapses -report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee said he would request documents and hold a hearing after the collapse of two U.S. banks raised concerns about the banking sector and roiled world markets, according to a media report on Tuesday. McHenry spoke after briefing Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, about the weekend collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which continued to weigh on investors on Tuesday. "They currently have the tools, and they‘ve used them appropriately to resolve two banks," McHenry said. Biden also vowed new bank rules after regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis were rolled back under former Republican President Donald Trump. The panel's ranking Democrat, Maxine Waters, on Monday urged bipartisan work to ensure the stability of the financial system.

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