On CNN March 14, Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized:
What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means … is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base. Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say, at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course they are.
… So this is a breathtaking step which effectively nationalizes or federalizes the deposit base of the U.S. financial system.
The deposit base of the financial system has not actually been nationalized, but Congress is considering modifications to the FDIC insurance limit. Meanwhile, one state that does not face those problems is North Dakota, where its state-owned bank acts as a “mini-Fed” for the state. But first, a closer look at the issues.
Continue readingFiled under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: Bank of North Dakota, banking crisis, banks, economy, Ellen Brown, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, nationalization, public banking, SIGNATURE BANK, SILICON VALLEY BANK | 7 Comments »
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
How the War on Crypto Triggered a Banking Crisis
According to an article in American Banker titled “SEC’s Gensler Directly Links Crypto and Bank Failures,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler has asked for more financial resources to police the crypto market. Gensler testified at an April 18 House Financial Services Committee hearing:
Cryptocurrency experts Caitlin Long and Nic Carter take the opposite view. They acknowledge the link between crypto and the recent wave of bank failures and the runs and threatened runs they triggered, but Carter and Long make a compelling case that it was the FDIC, the SEC and the Federal Reserve that brought the banks down, by a coordinated, extrajudicial “war on crypto” that blocked that otherwise-legal industry from acquiring the banking services it needs.
The public banking movement has run up against similar roadblocks. Both cryptocurrencies and publicly-owned banks compete with the Wall Street-dominated private banking cartel, but more on that after a look at the suspicious events behind the recent bank runs.
Continue reading →Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: cryptocurrencies, deposit insurance, FDIC, war on crypto | 125 Comments »