The Federal Reserve hiked its target federal-funds interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point Wednesday, the ninth in a series of hikes that started in March 2022.
Read MoreFed Raises Interest Rates a Quarter-Point, Highest Levels Since 2007
Category: Economy
Janet Yellen Says More Bank Bailouts Could Be on the Horizon
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in remarks Tuesday that regulators may ensure all deposits at more banks following the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank depositor bailouts.
Yellen said the bailouts were essential to safeguard the U.S. banking system in prepared remarks at the American Bankers Association Tuesday, referencing the Federal Reserve’s actions in insuring the deposits of SVB’s customers.
Read More‘Sustainable’ Electric Cars Are Getting Junked Over Minor Damage
Insurers are being forced to write off many electric vehicles with only minor damage to battery packs, sending the batteries to scrap yards and hindering the climate benefits of going electric, Reuters reported.
Battery packs typically represent roughly half the cost of an electric vehicle, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars, often making it more economical for insurers to consider a car as totalled than replace a battery pack, according to Reuters. While many carmakers, including Ford and GM, told Reuters that their battery packs were repairable, many are unwilling to share key data with third-party insurers to help assess damage.
Read MoreJanet Yellen’s Policy Would Destroy Small U.S. Banks While Bailing Out Chinese Depositors, Experts Say
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated during her testimony at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on March 16 that she, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board, the Fed board, and President Joe Biden would only safeguard uninsured deposits at banks whose failures they determine would pose “systemic risks” to the economy, which will destroy small regional banks, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On the other hand, it will enable big banks to be more reckless because their depositors will be made whole if they fail. In the case of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), this will include many Chinese companies that will be getting reimbursed by community banks, according to Reuters.
Read MoreHousing Boom: Some Maricopa County Assessments Increased 28 Percent for 2024
Overall median property values increased in Maricopa County, with manufactured homes particularly seeing an uptick in worth.
A swath of property owners in the county were mailed their Notices of Value for the 2024 tax year at the end of February. These assessments help determine the taxable Limited Property Value.
Read More‘That’s a Lie’: GOP Senator Presses Janet Yellen on Plan to Pay for Social Security
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana accused the Biden administration of lying about its commitment to working with Congress to protect seniors’ social security benefits at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday.
Cassidy asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was testifying about President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024, if the president was aware that “when [Social Security] goes broke in nine years” there would be a 24% cut in benefits for current recipients.
Read MoreBlackRock CEO Scales Back Emphasis on Climate Investing: Not the Environmental Police
CEO Larry Fink of investing titan BlackRock put reduced emphasis on climate and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals in an annual letter to the company’s investors and stakeholders Wednesday, amid Republican criticism of his firm’s investing strategy.
BlackRock has faced significant criticism from Republicans, who allege that the company has focused too much on “woke” investing to the detriment of its clients, and more recently Democrats who argue the company hasn’t gone far enough with its ESG efforts. Fink’s reduced emphasis on his firm’s role in the energy transition stands in stark contrast to his 2020 letter to investors, in which he argued the company had a “significant responsibility … to play a constructive role” in the transition to low-carbon sources of energy, Axios reported.
Read MoreClaremont Institute Reveals Database Tracking Corporate Funding of Black Lives Matter
The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life on Tuesday unveiled a database to track funding to Black Lives Matter and related organizations.
Read MoreAs Losses Mounted, Silicon Valley Bank Doubled Down on Woke Investments and Left-Wing Rhetoric
Long before its epic collapse, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was a darling of the left. It allied in cash and manpower with a liberal nonprofit run by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife and fully embraced the environmental, social and governance (ESG) platform now being banned in some red states, while celebrating its executives’ involvement in the LGBTQ+ movement.
As SVB’s investment failures mounted, the bank doubled down on its ideological commitments by pledging $5 billion in new green tech outlays, despite signs of rising interest rates negatively impacting that sector. Some institutional investors also began to raise concerns about the overall balance sheet.
Read MoreCommentary: Despite ‘Strong’ Rhetoric, Biden Administration Signals Gloomy Economic Outlook
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the now-released President’s Budget is projecting just 0.6 percent in inflation-adjusted real growth of the U.S. economy in 2023 as the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2023 and peak at 4.6 percent in 2024 after the economy is finished overheating from the continued, elevated inflation, consumers max out on credit and spending falls off a cliff.
Read MoreOil CEOs See Massive Bonuses amid Record Profits
The pay packages for the chief executives of British oil giants BP and Shell skyrocketed in 2022 after the oil titans posted record profits off the back of high gas prices last year, Reuters reported Friday.
The salary of BP CEO Bernard Looney climbed to roughly £1.3 million, while performance-related bonuses and stock awards climbed to £10.03 million, to a total of £11.33 million in compensation, more than two and a half times the £4.46 million he earned in 2021, the company announced Friday. BP —which lagged behind its American competitors in 2022 despite a record profit of roughly $28 billion — has drawn criticism from activists for cutting its green investments and reinvesting in gas and oil, Reuters reported.
Read MoreBiden Admin Shot Down Purchase Attempts for Failed Bank, Former Trump Official Says
A former economic adviser to former President Donald Trump said Monday that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) prevented several efforts to purchase Silicon Valley Bank. Federal regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank Friday after its stock price collapsed and customers began a bank run following the financial institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion loss on asset sales due to high interest rates, CNBC reported. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) also shut down Signature Bank Sunday, citing “systemic risk,” CNBC reported separately.
Read MoreMassive Skilled Labor Shortage Sparks Nationwide Refocus on Technical Education
Awareness of the nation’s massive labor shortage problem is increasing.
The problem is encapsulated by the latest news out of Kentucky, where one carpenter’s skills are in high demand.
Read MoreTreasury Inspector General Audit: 42,000 Federal Employees ‘Repeatedly’ Don’t File Federal Returns
Tens of thousands of federal employees have “repeatedly” failed to file their federal tax returns, according to a new federal watchdog report.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration flags 42,000 so-called “federal employee non-filers” and states the government is limited in its authority to punish them, according to the Washington Times.
Read MoreCommentary: Climate Policies Will Shut Down Farmers
Belgian and Dutch farmers are protesting because they are losing their livelihoods in the name of fighting so-called climate change as European governments seek to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, necessary inputs of modern agriculture. Will American farmers and consumers soon face the same fate?
European farmers are being told that because of the aim for “net-zero emissions” of greenhouse gases and other so-called pollutants in 2050, their industry is being phased out if they can’t adapt.
Read MoreSlave Labor Clouded Plunging U.S. Solar Market in 2022
U.S. solar panel installations plummeted in 2022 as lingering supply chain issues hindered the industry, although forecasters anticipate a bounceback and significant growth over the next decade, according to a joint report from the industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and research analytics firm Woods Mackenzie released Thursday.
The primary cause of the decline was a significant disruption in the solar panel supply chain caused by detentions of Chinese solar panel materials by U.S. Customs and Border Protection over concerns that the products were developed by the forced labor of Uighur muslims, according to the report. While 2022 was a “tough year” for solar, supply chain issues are expected to be resolved in 2023, leading to a 41% surge in installations, Michelle Davis, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report, said in a press release Thursday.
Read MoreBiden Proposes $6.8 Trillion Budget for FY 2024, Trillion More than Last Year
President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a $6.8 trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2024, which is $1 trillion more than his budget proposal last year.
Biden proposed increasing taxes in order to fund the budget.
Read MoreEco-Conscious ESG Investors Among Top Shareholders in Rail Giant Under Fire for Toxic Spill
Three of the five top shareholders in Norfolk Southern — the freight rail carrier under the spotlight for its saftey and environmental record following last month’s toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — have been aligned with the eco-conscious, socially aware ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing framework embraced by many leading financial firms in recent years. Asset management firms BlackRock Fund Advisors, JPMorgan Investment Management, and The Vanguard Group were all part of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, a coalition of ESG-minded money mangers committed to channeling investment capital to firms working toward the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as outlined in the Paris Climate Accord.
Read MorePoll: Inflation Has Americans Worried About Covering Expenses After Job Loss
A majority of Americans polled said they couldn’t afford to pay emergency expenses or cover their living expenses for just one month if they lost their primary source of income, according to Bankrate’s latest Annual Emergency Savings Report. The main reason cited is record-high inflation.
The majority surveyed, 68%, said they’re “worried they wouldn’t be able to cover their living expenses for just one month if they lost their primary source of income.”
Read MoreCaterpillar Announces Relocation of Global Headquarters from Illinois to Texas
Construction and mining equipment giant Caterpillar Inc. announced Tuesday it will move its global headquarters from its current location in Deerfield, Illinois, to the company’s existing office in Irving, Texas.
“We believe it’s in the best strategic interest of the company to make this move, which supports Caterpillar’s strategy for profitable growth as we help our customers build a better, more sustainable world,” said Chairman and CEO Jim Umpleby in a press release.
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