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The failure of Silicon Valley Bank sparked a mini-panic in financial markets. The word “contagion” was tossed around as if the banking system were replete with other banks in similar straits as SVB. There was even an old fashioned bank run at SVB and some other banks resulting in the failure of Barney Frank’s Signature Bank. Recall that Frank was cosponsor of the Dodd-Frank Act that was supposed to lessen bank failure.

I presume the run was from depositors who held more that the federally insured $250,000 since 94% of SVB’s deposits were over the insured amount. Those depositors would only be able to access $250,000 and would receive a voucher for the rest. Of course the Biden administration through the FDIC did exactly the wrong thing by insuring all deposits regardless of denomination. This will inspire continued recklessness by some bankers to conduct unsafe and unsound banking practices. Moreover, the bailout was of depositors who likely did not need to be rescued. The SVB episode is a prime example of incompetence at all levels. The banking executives, the California state banking regulator and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco were all complicit and all should be fired.

To recount, SVB was heavily involved in the tech industry, startups and venture capital. It expanded its loan portfolio rapidly taking advantage of the Fed’s low interest rate policy that started in 2009. That SVB grew so rapidly should have been a warning sign to its regulators. Too rapid growth is a fundamental warning sign and was apparently ignored by the regulators. Another warning sign that the bank was in trouble was its borrowing of $15 billion from the Federal Home Loan Bank system. SVB’s management was incompetent and obviously did not learn its lesson from the S and L failures of the 1980s. 

The S&Ls failed because they had short term liabilities (deposits) and long term assets (mortgages). When interest rates rose, the cost of their liabilities rose while the return on their assets stayed the same, eventually resulting in insolvency. The same thing happened with SVB. They took their deposits and either loaned them out to tech firms and startups or bought long-term bonds. They then were doubly exposed by the downturn in the tech industry and the Fed’s raising of interest rates. The downturn in tech brought about defaults on SVBs loans and the rise in interest rates mean that SVBs bond portfolio lost value. As a result SVB started borrowing liquidity from the Federal Home Loan Bank system. Surely, the regulators had to have been aware of the borrowing and should have moved to examine the bank. Since SVB was a state chartered bank, the primary responsibility for examining the bank for safety and soundness lies with California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. The state regulator did not act until it took possession of SVB citing inadequate liquidity and insolvency and turned the bank over to the FDIC to dispose of its assets and pay out insured depositors. That California did not pursue corrective actions sooner is an indictment of that department and its heads should be fired. But of course they won’t. It is also an indictment of the Federal regulators, namely the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. 

To my knowledge, no Federal Reserve president has ever been fired. It is time to change that and for the Fed to fire the president of the San Francisco Fed, Mary Daly. The regional Fed banks have the responsibility for supervising and examining the Fed member banks in their districts and the San Francisco Fed failed to heed the warning signs from SVB and shares the responsibility of this debacle. Mary Daly has long been recognized as one of the least able of all Fed bank presidents. She does not have a background in bank regulation and supervision and has not made these an important part of her tenure at the head of the reserve bank. In fact she was once a “labor inequity researcher” – whatever that is – at the San Francisco Fed and said that the Marxist economist Gene Wagner “has mentored me my whole life.” 

It is time for the Fed to reexamine the role of the regional banks and emphasize safety and soundness. It is also time for the Fed to insist that its regional presidents have training and background in these areas. The stability of the banking system is too important to be left in the hands of amateurs and the incompetent. Both the heads of the California regulator and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco bear responsibility and both should be fired.

The sharp knives are out for Ron DeSantis who infuriated the leftist mob when he said that Florida was the state where woke goes to die. But DeSantis doesn’t care. He obviously feels that attacking “woke” is a key to his political future. He has proclaimed “We will never surrender to the woke mob.”  When Disney was pushing the leftist agenda, DeSantis had them stripped of their self-governing status in their theme park in Orlando. 

DeSantis’ latest salvo against the left created a furor when he would not allow the AP course in black history to be added the school curricula in Florida. He was promptly branded as a racist. The intent of the media onslaught is to get blacks firmly against him and it has worked. Two close friends of mine repeated the narrative that DeSantis was trying to erase black history. This saddened me because it showed that even very smart people are intellectually lazy. I provided them with other evidence and they both have changed their minds. No matter, because where he now appears, there is a protest organized against him calling him anti-black. He was attacked by the usual suspects including the White House, the Vice President, the teachers’ unions, the View and the liberal press. 

However he opposed the teaching of woke black history rather than the teaching of black history. None defended why critical race theory, advocating for the abolition of prisons, queer black studies, black feminism and a laudatory section on the Marxist anti-family Black Lives Matter were essential parts of black history. I bet that even the discredited warped view of the 1619 project was included. Headlines read “What is behind DeSantis push to erase black history?” Another accused him of altering black history. This was especially curious since the AP course was the one altering black history.

The governor’s office released a statement saying the proposed course is a “vehicle for a political agenda” that leaves far too much room for “ideological material” to make its way into the curriculum. Of course this was true. There was no mention of black conservatives and the AP course was revised to include some of them like Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas. Yet more revision is needed to honesty tell the remarkable story of blacks in American history.

Black American history is American history. It is a rich, diverse, compelling story of courage, resistance, emancipation, resilience and triumph over daunting odds. When the slaves were freed, most had no possessions and little if any education. Many did not even have a last name. Yet through hard work, faith and inner strength they and their proud descendants were able to navigate through the barriers imposed by the Jim Crow south and the more subtle discrimination present in the north. What about the early black legislators, inventors, educators, scholars and entrepreneurs that are missing from woke black history? It is though the left wants to portray blacks as hapless victims rather than telling the true story of dealing with and overcoming adversity.

Governor DeSantis rejected the AP course on Black History on the grounds that the course did not relate this history but instead injected a biased, political interpretation of the American Black experience. The AP course was an exercise in promoting a political agenda rather than an accurate telling of our history. I wonder if the AP course told of the abolitionist movement that existed prior to the founding of the country and of black historical figures who defended the Constitution such as Frederick Douglass. It should also be noted that contrary to the claims that Gov DeSantis is trying to erase black history, that the governor annually awards winners of Black History Month student contests in Florida. These are not the actions of a racist. I applaud Gov. DeSantis and his Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr for having the courage to reject the biased historical perspective of the AP course and to insist on educating our children rather than indoctrinating them.

• Vivek Ramaswamy for president
• News reports show that 22 public schools in Chicago have zero students who are proficient in math or reading! Its time to blow up the education industrial complex and take back our schools. It’s another socialist failure. I bet no one gets fired. If this were corporate America, the board of directors and CEO would be gone.
• Isn’t it interesting that the rival news networks mainly talk about their rivals? I bet you that Fox spends half their airtime talking about the personalities on CNN and MSNBC. Presumably those networks talk about Fox. I could care less what is said on the View or by Don Lemon. Why is this news?
• How is it that only blacks have “leaders” and “spokesmen”? Who is the Catholic spokesman in America? Certainly not Joe Biden. Who is the Jewish spokesman in America? Certainly not Chuck Schumer. I’ve concluded that the existence of spokesmen means that they speak to the media for themselves and not for whom they contend. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were made rich by stupid white people as are Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I haven’t a clue why anyone is paying a dime to Robin Diangelo for her “white fragility” BS.
• I bet if you asked virtually any black person who is their “leader” or their “spokesmen” they would be speechless. 
• Thomas Sowell not being awarded a Nobel Prize further degrades the award. Even that charlatan Paul Krugman got the award in economics and Krugman’s scholarship is at a kindergarten level compared to Sowell’s.
• I’ve written before that Biden’s cabinet is the most incompetent in my memory. Its incompetence is only exceeded by the appointments to judgeships, agencies and subcabinent posts. Consider judges who do not know the Constitution, appointee to the FAA who has no knowledge of flying, others seemingly randomly chosen who check a particular box for diversity and inclusion.
• Its not my imagination but the last three times I have gone through the self checkout at Walmart, some associates have showed up watching me scan my items. The last time the associate came over and asked did I complete the survey at the end of the checkout. I told her no and that I was wondering why I was the only one asked. I then said that I guess she wanted to make sure that black people weren’t stealing on her watch. Of course she denied it and of course she was lying.
• Poor Austan Goolsby. The former head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, one time professor of economics at the University of Chicago and current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago had his floated out there as being in line for vice chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors replacing Lael Brainard who for some reason is leaving the Fed to become chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. Goolsby is apparently a straight white male so his name was quickly jettisoned and replaced by those of two women (I don’t know their sexual orientation).
• Jill Biden gave an international women’s award for courage to a biological male. Apparently, some men make better women than women. The recipient reportedly actively campaigned to change the name of the National Women’s Conference to the “Plurinational Conference of Women and Lesbian, Cross-Dresser, Transgender, Bisexual, Intersex and Non-Binary Persons”. Wow. Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?

More and more Americans do not trust the federal government. Since 1960, trust has fallen from an amazing 70 percent to 24 percent in 2022. The decline started with Watergate, accelerated with the misinformation from the CDC and Dr Fauci during Covid, the DOJ, IRS and FBI targeting conservatives along with the FDIC and “Justice” Department trying to get banks to cancel the accounts of gun owners and debt collectors. The serial lying coming from this president has lessened trust even more. Trust varies. Twenty nine percent of the Democrats mostly trust the government. Only 9 percent of the Republicans are in this category. Interestingly, trust amongst minorities is significantly higher than that for whites, Blacks must be suffering from acute memory loss. The progressive Woodrow Wilson was a blatant racist and imposed segregation on the civil service, the military and brought Jim Crow into the federal government. Franklin Roosevelt would not allow blacks to enter the White House through the front door. During his terms, the White House was indeed “the white house.” He invited only white athletes to ceremonies celebrating their accomplishments at the Berlin Olympics. It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who finally gave Jesse Owens his over due recognition. Roosevelt’s Federal Housing Administration invented redlining by denying loan guarantees in minority neighborhoods and was the reason my father literally hated that president. Roosevelt’s administration was also responsible for the infamous “Tuskegee Experiment” in which the nation’s Public Health “Service” conducted a study of syphilis on 600 black men. The men were promised free health care. No treatment was ever given. Although started in 1932, the study was only stopped in 1972 when it was leaked to the press. 

Lyndon Johnson opposed civil rights legislation when he was in the Senate and Al Gore’s father voted against it. Johnson frequently used the N-word and was quoted aa saying about his signing of the Civil Rights bill, “I’ll have them [racial epithet] voting Democrat for 200 years.” He was right. But the signing of the bill derailed black economic progress and destroyed the black family – leading to an array of dire social consequences. When he appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, one of Johnson’s biographers quoted him as saying “when I appoint a [deleted] to the bench, I want everybody to know he’s a [deleted].” J. Edgar Hoover headed the FBI for nearly 50 years and his FBI targeted blacks and branded the civil rights movement as communist. It was said that he kept his job by blackmailing presidents – having gathered unsavory information on each. He hated Martin Luther King Jr. He tapped King’s telephone calls and some think was complicit in King’s assassination. He also is thought to be involved in the killing of Bobby Kennedy and the assassination of JFK in order to get Lyndon Johnson the presidency. Jimmy Carter even with a Democrat congress failed to pass the MLK, Jr holiday bill. Ronald Reagan signed the bill.

I’ve written before about Biden’s racist history (see my Knoxville Focus article of November 10, 2021). Again, the media and prominent blacks give Biden a pass. If he were a Republican, he would have been run out of the Senate (re: Trent Lott). Remember “Latinx” people don’t want to get vaccinated because they’re worried they’ll be deported.”? Or how about when talking about his vaccine mandates he said, “They (blacks) are used to being experimented on—the Tuskegee Airmen and others” – apparently confusing the black World War II pilots with the infamous experiment. Maybe this “trust” is why you see most people who are still wearing masks are black.

Blacks somehow have glossed over all this and more. I could write volumes on government racism throughout American history up to the present day, Yet blacks still trust the federal government and vote Democrat even though that party from the Civil War to the present has actively stifled black progress. Go figure.

There is little doubt that diversity, equity and inclusion has added administrative bloat on many college campuses. Ron DeSantis has asked for an accounting of DEI on Florida’s campuses. It was reported that one university had 31 administrators solely devoted to DEI. One conservative website claimed that “The average American university has more than 45 individuals with jobs devoted to promoting so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It further states that “DEI programs push divisive identity politics as well as distorted narratives about American History.” Personally I find it hard to believe that the average university has 45 plus jobs solely to promoting DEI. What would all those folks do? While it is true that universities have engaged in administrative bloat in the face of declining enrollments, 45 DEI administrators would have difficulty finding something to do. At best, many DEI officials engage in make-work. For example, many universities require their professors who are already overwhelmingly progressives to swear on the DEI altar. They have to sign statements, often put statements on course syllabi and take tests to determine implicit bias. Clearly, none of this is significant and given the professors’ politics is redundant. No matter. Your flaming lib sociology professor with the Karl Marx poster may be a closet racist. Too often, even progressive professors look down their noses at DEI administrators claiming that those positions were just added to increase the high administrators’ kingdom and to provide make-work for minorities.

DEI staffing may be bloated but that is the norm for campus administrations. I would wager that administrators could be cut by a third without any loss of function. However, I do not favor the elimination of DEI on campus. Yes on some campuses, DEI needs to pivot in order to actually be useful. Some universities have programs that advocate racial segregation with no whites allowed. This amazes me since it is whites who are okaying programs to exclude other whites. There are black dorms, black programs, black scholarships, black workshops and black initiatives. If it were reversed, the condemnation would be deafening. Some universities teach Critical Race Theory which brands all whites as racists – including liberal professors. 

But DEI on campus need not do any of these. Rather it would serve a useful purpose if it provided a foundation for first generation college students to acclimate to the university. Rather than segregating by race, DEI should bring students together to get to know each other and to discuss important issues that arise on campus. For me, the ideal model is what is referred on the University of Tennessee’s DEI website. It reads “We are committed to supporting the creation of equitable and inclusive spaces for students, faculty, and staff, with a focus on removing structural barriers and fostering an atmosphere in which every member of the campus community matters and belongs. We work to advance access, accountability, an inclusive campus climate, and equity while combating racism, bias, and discrimination.” This is ideal. Instead of being exclusive as some DEI programs clearly are at other universities, this statement aims to truly be inclusive and the only way to accomplish that is to include students from all backgrounds, all beliefs and all political views. Moreover, on a college campus, DEI should further the mission of the university to promote educational and professional advancement and excellence. Unfortunately, too many of our colleges have lowered academic standards and encourage mediocrity rather than excellence. Rigorous courses have been eliminated from those that are required or eliminated altogether. Exams are now mostly machine graded true-false and multiple choice. I became increasingly frustrated with my undergraduate students over the years. They knew less and less about less and less. Sometimes, I would wager my seniors that they could not get 50 percent on an entrance exam to Bronx High School administered in 1888. They said they could so the bet was that if they made 50 percent I would increase their final grade one level, but if they got less than 50 percent I would reduce it one level. I let them see the exam first. None of them took it. I was asked occasionally by students “Why do you know so much?” My response was always “Why do you know so little?”

I know it is asking the impossible, but I would like to see the universities recommit themselves to academic excellence. Ideally, DEI could help lead the way by exposing students to successful people from all backgrounds in various fields who have triumphed against daunting odds. DEI could play a valuable role on college campus. That it does not is an indictment of campus administrators and not of DEI.       

In case you missed it, the left’s latest jihad is the war on gas stoves. Never mind that most cooks prefer gas. Never mind that 40 million households have gas stoves (including my two cooktops). The powers that be have determined that gas stoves are bad for you and (gasp) bad for the environment. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said it was contemplating a ban because of health and pollution concerns. One of its commissioners tweeted that “gas stoves can emit dangerous [levels] of toxic chemicals—even when not in use—and @USCPSC will consider all approaches to regulation.” New stoves might be banned but existing stoves could face being regulated. The governor of New York also proposed banning all natural  gas heating and appliances from new buildings. She said “Buildings are the largest source of emissions in our state, accounting for a third of our greenhouse gas output, as well as pollution that aggravates asthma and endangers our children. I’m proposing a plan to end the sale of any new fossil-fuel-powered heating equipment by 2030.” Not surprisingly California was the first state to prohibit natural gas appliances when the California Air Resources Board approved to ban them by 2030. Other leftist-governed states will follow.

The Biden Administration which has prostrated itself to the green god of the left,  included an $800 rebate in the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” if you buy an electric stove. There have been a few studies citing the health effects of breathing in the nitrogen dioxide emitted from gas stoves. But the conclusions have been questioned by other researchers. Never mind that the number of cases cited are few, that has never concerned those interested in eliminating fossil fuels and controlling you via the nanny state. As to the contributions your gas stove to polluting the earth, one study estimates that the emissions from gas stoves are equivalent to that of one half million automobiles (there are around 280 million cars in the US).

Several Republicans lashed out at the Biden Administration, calling such rules evidence of the nanny state gone wild. Even Democrat Joe Manchin tweeted “The federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner. I can tell you the last thing that would ever leave my house is the gas stove that we cook on.” In reaction, the chairman of the CPSC said “to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so. CPSC is researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks. CPSC also is actively engaged in strengthening voluntary safety standards for gas stoves.” Biden even had his press secretary issue a statement that the president was not looking to ban gas stoves.

There is a very simple way to prevent emissions of nitrogen dioxide from causing harm as a result of cooking: turn on the stove’s vent. 

But of course that involves personal responsibility with is an anathema to the left. Of course, gas stoves are also asserted to be racist. Some Democrat legislators sent a letter to the CPSC alleging that gas stove emissions had a disproportionately adverse affect on the health of black, Latino and low income households. One study found that 12 percent of children with asthma lived in households with gas stoves and since black children are three times more likely than white children to have asthma, then this becomes an “equity” issue. However, the authors of the study noted that there is no hard evidence that cooking with gas actually caused the asthma. It seems to me that a reasonable person would note that if 12 percent of asthmatic children live in homes with gas stoves then that must mean that 88 percent do not. So shouldn’t we ban electric stoves as well? Obviously, those on the left would blanche at reverting to using wood or coal, so they are touting induction stoves, which start at over $1,000. The Inflation Reduction Act rebate will come in handy here.

The Oracle Who Names is at it again proclaiming that henceforth illegal aliens be referred to as “migrants.” Interestingly all media have bent on one knee to comply including the “conservative” press. It was enlightening that a sports announcer got suspended for calling illegal aliens “illegal aliens.” The Oracle has spoken so all must obey. The Oracle’s children have also been busy. But since they do not have the same command over the media, their efforts to change the language has been less successful. One of the latest was the University of Southern California’s school of social work discovering that the word “field” was racist and announcing that henceforth, the word “practicum” will be used instead. The school said that “This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that would be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language.” So now “field” work is now called “practicum” work? Now doesn’t that just roll off the tongue? It is obvious that “school” should be put in quote marks for that part of USC not a serious academic college. The same is true for some administrators at Stanford who had too much time on their hands. They released an index of “harmful language” showing words that were deemed racist. They included American, Hispanic, “Karen”, father, victim, straight, landlord, ladies, chief, brown bag, white paper, illegal immigrant (migrant!), master, blind, gangbusters and so on. Stanford points out that it took over a year to compile the list. That is reminiscent of asking “how many campus administrators does it take to change a light bulb?” At Stanford, the number of campus administrators almost equals the number of students. After a week or so, Stanford removed the guide when the Wall Street Journal pointed out that the guide read more like the Babylon Bee than from one of the country’s premier universities. Stanford seems to have forgotten that the vast majority of us do not associate racism with hardly any of those words and that those who feel that such words are “hurtful” and make them feel “threatened” are whiners and are best ignored.

This silliness is running rampant in our universities which have become temples of wokeness. Most every campus is overstocked with administrators pretending to be busy doing stuff. Like Stanford, many universities have an administrator – student ratio approaching one to one. Victor David Hanson points out that while college enrollment has dropped, the number of professors has increased slightly while the number of administrators has doubled. Each campus must now have a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) administrator and staff and while some do good in providing needed outreach, most oversee reams of paperwork to demand inclusiveness and to root out white supremacy. Of course, this is laughable since 90 percent of professors are leftist, progressive, socialists who give lip service to DEI all the time. Even southern state universities like my alma mater the University of Georgia have pockets of wokeness. Go to the website of its college of education (named for one of my dearest friends) and you will find homage to DEI on a breathtaking scale. Ironically, the college is housed in Aderhold Hall named for the university’s president when I was enrolled there. Aderhold was no fan of DEI. The university was forced to integrate during his tenure. My experience was that he did not want us at his university and many in his administration actively worked to limit the number of blacks admitted to Georgia and once we were there, put barriers in our way. Maybe the college should rethink the name of its building. 

I have heard faculty at other universities express resentment over the expanding reach of DEI. Professors are supposed to commit themselves to the DEI goals (again mostly redundant) as part of the evaluation for tenure and promotion while departments are to submit plans for DEI. Some of the universities’ colleges require a DEI statement on every faculty syllabus. If that existed for my department I would respectfully decline. Some administrators also want DEI to be included in the course material. Professors are to be  that he was tested for implicit bias – even though such tests are worthless. Again, given the politics of most professors, the imposition of DEI seems redundant. Yet again, university presidents like most bureaucrats want to expand their personal empires and have done so by hiring more administrators whose job is to meet most all day and conjure up busy work. At the same time, academic standards have been steadily eroding and in many colleges indoctrination has replaced education. I once referred to Stanford as the nation’s best university. Sadly, that is no longer true.