MARCH 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABUURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Republican Finger Pointers. Republicans are well known for passing blame to anyone, or thing, except where facts point or where they might be culpable. There seems no limit to the absurdities of their finger pointing. Now, their latest scapegoat for the collapse of two major banks this month? You got it: “woke” investment practice, once again dragging the effort to address the climate crisis into America’s increasingly polarizing culture wars. It doesn’t appear to matter—like always—that their reasoning” doesn’t align with assessments from leading economists.

“We see now coming out they were one of the most woke banks in their quest for the ESG-type policy and investing,” Kentucky Rep. James Comer, a Republican and chair of the House Oversight Committee, said on a Sunday morning Fox News program--referring to climate-friendly investment funds that take environmental, social and governance factors into account.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who is being floated as a potential GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election—also appeared on the Fox show, where he suggested diversity and equity efforts could be to blame. “I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff,” he said. “I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission.”

Other high-profile Republican pundits and far-right lawmakers, including the usual suspects Donald Trump Jr, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, chimed in with similar accusations on social media. Suzanne Downing, a former communications director of the Alaska Republican Party, explicitly blamed financial institutions “buying into climate change theology” in a Sunday op-ed.

But those accusations have been broadly refuted by leading economists who place the blame more squarely on rising interest rates from the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame inflation, plus decisions by the banks to invest in Treasury bonds and other government-backed securities, as well as cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

“I don’t have a clear idea of what woke is and it seems to change by the day. Maybe government bonds are now woke, but that is what got them into trouble,” Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research who predicted the 2008 housing bubble crash, told Business Insider.

According to analyses by Baker and other well-known economists, the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, which held some $220 billion in assets and was America’s 16th largest commercial bank before its collapse Friday, was tied largely to the bank’s decision to buy up government bonds amid the tech boom between 2019 and 2022, when many Silicon Valley companies were flush with cash.

With deposits skyrocketing and demand for loans relatively low, the bank chose to invest the bulk of that money in government bonds, he said, which tanked in value as the tech boom faded and the Fed raised interest rates to curb inflation. As clients began asking for their money back, Silicon Valley Bank was forced to prematurely sell $21 billion in bonds at a $1.8 billion loss, triggering an old-fashioned bank run, Rubinstein concluded.

Signature Bank’s collapse can be explained even more simplistically. As the finance trade publication Barron’s noted in its apt analysis, “the bank’s connections with cryptocurrency seem to have spooked depositors after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, prompting a run on the bank’s deposits which, in turn, prompted action from regulators.” Who warned U.S. banks to stay away from the cryptocurrency business.

These facts, of course, don’t resonate with the GOP’s deregulating faithful. No way would they connect the collapse to the Trump administration’s rolling back financial regulations that aimed at preventing financial crashes. As always, the American public will ultimately pay the price.

FEBRUARY 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

My mind set doesn't relate to short months, so, I apologize for the tardiness of the February IGGY.

1. Alaska Republican Rep. David Eastman. Republicans are always happy to reach a new low. In this case, as reported by the BBC, Eastman has been censured for asking if child abuse and neglect that result in literal death could be a “benefit to society.”

During a Monday, Feb. 20, Alaska House Judiciary Committee hearing on the long-term effects of child abuse, Eastman framed his little question by pontificating as follows:

“In the case where child abuse is fatal, obviously it’s not good for the child. But it’s actually a benefit to society because there aren’t needs for government services and whatnot over the whole course of that child’s life?”

Ghoulish! On Wednesday, his peers in the Alaska House of Representatives voted 35-1 to censure him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eastman—who, if you were wondering, is quite the Trump fan—was the dissenter.

“Can you say that again,” someone said after his initial question. “Did you say a benefit for society?”

“Um, talking dollars,” Eastman said. “You’ve got a 1.5 million-dollar price tag here for victims of fatal child abuse. It gets argued periodically that it’s actually a cost savings, because that child is not going to need any of those government services that they might otherwise be entitled to receive, and need based on growing up in this type of environment.”

Trevor Storrs, who serves as the president and CEO of the Alaska Children’s Trust, stressed that the loss of a child is an “unmeasurable” loss to both the family and society as a whole, “hugely tragic,” and that they weren’t otherwise sure “how to answer that” question.

When it came to introducing the measure to censure Eastman, Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray got emotional, and said his child is the “greatest joy” he’s ever had, and that there’s “no price tag on that.” Gray shared that he adopted his child out of the foster system.

Eastman, on his end, doesn’t seem to understand—or doesn’t seem to want to understand—just how badly he messed up.

"The outrageous accusation that somehow I and members of my district support the extermination of people or support child abuse when I've staked my entire political career arguing for the opposite is not acceptable in this body," Eastman said during the hearing on his censure.

This is not the first time Eastman has been censured. Back in 2017, he was censured for suggesting people in Alaska intentionally try to become pregnant in order to get a “free trip to the city” for abortions, as reported by the Associated Press.