Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Books are my comfort food!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

The revolution will be supervised.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

People are weird.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Democrats Are Good for the Economy

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Democrats Are Good for the Economy

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(Glibertarians, on the other hand, are not long-term thinkers. Although I personally suspect some of the biggest piranhas in the Silicon Valley tank had — at the very least — a pretty good idea this particular failure was coming… )


(More on this later, of course.)

Reader Interactions

243Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Imagine where we’d be if we didn’t have the electoral college and other structural impediments.

    ETA: We’d probably all be drag queens.

  2. 2.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    President Biden via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    When I took office, 18 million people had to rely on unemployment benefits.
    Today, that number is less than 2 million.

    “And House Republicans are determined,” replied House Republicans, “to do everything in our power to fix that electoral advantage by putting another 18 million people out of work by 11/24!”

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    TCM, Monday at 4 a.m. Eastern time, 49th Parallel. A two hour long forgotten gem, in my book. Also available for streaming on HBO Max, Tubi, Criterion Channel and Plex.

  7. 7.

    Mousebumples

    Open thread, so just a reminder that we’ve got another postcard & music thread tonight! I’ve got another 50 addresses for Jodi Habush Sinykin in SD-8 that I’m working on, and I’d love some company!

    Early voting starts March 21 for the April 4 election, so we’re also clear to start mailing the postcards.

    Lots of GOTV efforts on going. Even if you can’t make the thread tonight, please reach out to people you know in Wisconsin to ask them to support Judge Janet Protasiewicz, at least, for Supreme Court.

    Wisconsin voters can go to MYVOTE.WI.GOV to sign up for a mail ballot, find out where they can early vote in person, find out their polling place in April, and register to vote. March 15 is the last day to register to vote online, but Wisconsin does have election day registration.

    If someone is less internet savvy, they can also call (866) 868-3947 to get similar information. That’s for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. They’re not open over the weekend, but they could leave a message or just call back Monday, too.

    Thanks, Juicers, for helping me GOTV in Wisconsin!

  10. 10.

    Mousebumples

    @Mousebumples: Additional note, if you’re not into postcards but do want to help GOTV in Wisconsin, you can find other volunteer opportunities here. Phone banking, texting, and even a group that will send postcards to your Wisconsin network for you. (looks to be less handwritten though)

    And if you’re local (or in an adjacent state and willing to drive over the state border), I’m sure there are or will be canvassing options too.

    Postcards are best for my schedule with 2 little kiddos, but every little bit helps! And those little ones should be awake soon, but I’ll try to keep an eye on this thread for questions – though you might need to check back later if you do have a question.

    And I almost forgot! WaterGirl has a postcards page here, if you’re wanting to get started with that and aren’t sure how. 🤩

  12. 12.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @lowtechcyclist:

    “The economy is doing so well, our only option is to destroy it!” – GOP

    Exactly.

     

    @raven:

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: fewer

    [Puzzled look]? Why would House Republcans want fewer people out of work? It’s not like the GOP is gonna suddenly put country over party for the first time in … well, let’s be charitable and just call it scores of years.

    Or am I misreading your comment as a grammatical correction when you meant something else? I mean, it’s early, so I suppose there’s actually a pretty good chance of that.

  13. 13.

    New Deal democrat

    *Economically,* the US had the best response to COVID by far: generous free money to help businesses and consumers through the lockdown periods. That’s why the US economy came through so strong, with a legitimate Boom in 2021, only the 2nd since the 1960s (the 1990s tech Boom being the other).

    Another good thing: the wage gains have been the strongest among the bottom rung of workers.

    While I remain concerned that a recession is likely near (there were some yellow flags in the leading indicators within yesterday’s report), that is entirely because of the Fed’s rate hike campaign, not something intrinsic to the current economy.

    Also: if you want to savor some RW techbro tears, read the replies to this tweet:

    https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1634292056821764099

    Capitalism for the masses, socialism for Silicon Valley!

    Finally, an aside: has anyone had any dealings with Mark Cuban’s “Cost Plus Drugs”? I scrolled through some of his prices last week, and they were 50% or more lower than typical prices. Is there some hidden drawback why people shouldn’t sign up?

  24. 24.

    Princess

    @Baud: I read someone say the other day that we’re all born naked and everything we wear after that is drag, so I guess we’re already all drag queens of some kind. I’m okay with that.

  33. 33.

    artem1s

    Take your plan out of the witness protection program

    Day-um! Hakeem is worthy. Nancy Smash has passed on the power of The Hammer.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    Two days in a row without rain. First time in weeks being able to state that. Will Saturday make it three?

    Magic 8-ball sez: “This isn’t freakin’ Delphi, bro.”

  43. 43.

    MomSense

    Good morning, jackals!  I’m in the dirty jersey with a looong layover until my flight to Florida.

    Inspired by the states who have joined together to protect abortion rights and work to defend and expand access to medication abortion, I’ve been thinking that we need to do something similar for our beloved trans community.

    I started by looking up the situation in my home state – spoiler alert it’s awesome.  The law we passed by citizen referendum in 2005 (so proud to have been a small part of that effort) explicitly protects trans rights.  Democrats in our state legislature have also successfully blocked attempts to allow school sports to discriminate.  Definitely more to do to including making gender affirming care more accessible and we will do that (!).  I’m wondering if our pack could join forces and start by researching the legal status in every state and then figure out what we can do to expand rights?  Are there organizations we can support?  Are there groups of people organizing who need a boost?
    We are a kickass community and we know how to help the helpers.  Any ideas?

  45. 45.

    Tony Jay

    The continuing fallout over our Tory-run BBC’s deeply unpopular decision to suspend their top Football pundit, Gary ‘Big Ears’ Lineker, from his job hosting Match of the Day, the premier weekly Football round-up, has gone into overdrive this morning.

    For those who don’t know, basically, the Tories are so far behind in the polls (thanks to Flobalob and Lettuce Lady) that they’ve had to row back on their anti-EU bullshit, which has deeply angered their version of the Freedom Caucus, so they’ve lunged into red-meat mode on the topic of asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats under the slogan of ‘Stop The Boats’. Think Trump’s moronic ‘Build The Wall’ mantra and you’ve basically got it, in that it’s inhuman, idiotic, illegal, and a ‘problem’ entirely of the Government’s own creation (since they have deliberately closed off all legal routes for seeking asylum) that they obviously plan to whip-up into a wedge issue for the next Election so they can run on withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights – Brexit 2: Electric Boogaloo.

    The language that our pitifully underqualified Home Secretary Suella ‘I can say 14 words!’ Braverman has been using to stir up hatred and fear (“Invasion”, “Swarms”, etc) was called out by Lineker on his personal Twitter account for echoing the language used in 1930’s Germany. He was right, both factually and morally, so of course the Right exploded in hypocritical rage and the Tory placemats clogging up the executive positions at the top of the BBC, who have always displayed absolutely zero interest in reining in the pro-Tory bias of their top-level News and Current Affairs stars) moved quickly to demand that Lineker withdraw his comments and promise to keep his political opinions to himself, unless those opinions are ones the Tory Party wants him to express.

    To his credit, Lineker told them to more or less go piss up a rope, so they announced he had decided to ‘step back’ from his role on Match Of The Day while they clarified his future Twitter policy, so he announced that he hadn’t agreed any such thing and they’d actually suspended him. To their credit, every one of his fellow presenters on MOTD announced that they wouldn’t be going on the show while Lineker was suspended, and once it became clear that the BBC couldn’t find anyone willing to torch their reputation by filling in for them (this in a country with quite a lot of moronic pro-Brexit, anti-Immigration former Sportspeeps, so yeah, toxic) they had to announce that the show would be going ahead with no presenters or pundits at all, just match footage from the games.

    It got worse. Now it’s come out that even the match commentators are going on strike to protest the BBC’s executive’s decisions. Followed by the presenters and pundits of the BBC’s other Football shows announcing that they too were going to suspend their involvement with BBC coverage until this bed is de-shitted. No football coverage at all.

    As far as complete misreading of the public mood and – more crucially – the mood amongst their own employees and freelance staff – is concerned, this shitshow has burnt past 100% and hit Infinity Plus. All the BBC’s leadership have done is force people to make a moral choice while also pointing a bright light at the fact that most of them are or have been loud and proud supporters of the Tory Party, not only in word and deed but also financially.

    It’s nice to see. Granted, it’s a bit late in the day to see the Media Establishment take a stand against bullying, censorship and Rightwing bias after a lot of them gleefully went along with it from 2015 to 2019, but baby steps and all that.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @MomSense

    I’m in the dirty jersey with a looong layover

    Newark Liberty International? Used to be a real dingy, shabby pit of despair.

    It’s seen greater than marginal improvement. Now more like a pockmark of PITA.
    ;)
    .

  49. 49.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Princess: @Baud:

    When is it drag? Where’s the line between “boy clothes” and “girl clothes”? It’s all so arbitrary.

    I just remembered a long (not very funny) joke from my father-in-law about the boy who is afraid of kreplach. Kreplach are a certain kind of Jewish folded dumpling. So they try to overcome the boy’s fears by slowly creating the kreplach step by step, showing him there’s nothing to be afraid of. And he’s fine until the very last step when he suddenly shouts “Oy vey! Kreplach!”

    So if we imagine a picture of a guy in clothes that gradually morph from pants and shirt, to priestly robes, to kilt, to skirt, where exactly is the line where our MAGA viewer suddenly shouts, “Oy vey! Drag!” and demands that the man on the screen be jailed?

  50. 50.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Mousebumples: I had an online order for 50 postcards. Or at least I thought I did. After waiting a week, I thought to check my USPS account, and also my checking account, and there’s no evidence of such an order.

    So I guess I’m going to get them in person after all, and write them this afternoon.

  56. 56.

    sab

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I am so old that I remember all the dress codes in the 1960s. Girls and women wore skirts in only in all but the most casual settings. Girls couldn’t really play on the playground because we wore skirts and climbing on the playground equipment would be indecent. Woomen were barred from restaurants if they turned up in pantsuits. As late as 1988 I remember a coworker being sent home from a San Francisco Big Eight accounting firm because she was wearing a very nice pantsuit.

    I am straight cis female very comfortable in my gender but I sure don’t want to have to go back to wearing skirts and stockings.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    Why yes I am at Newark Liberty.  It’s not bad at all for a US airport.  One of my friends who grew up in NJ calls it the dirty jersey and it stuck with me.

    There is a playground with some stationary bikes so I’ll probably head over there later and do some spinning.

  58. 58.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Tony Jay: I keep hoping that eventually this story will get to the point where the UK says “actually Brexit was a bad idea and we’d like to rejoin please?” We’re not close to that I suppose?

    We’re going to be in Ireland in late summer. We were going to hit Edinburgh, but dropped it from the itinerary. For reasons of time rather than fears that the UK has descended into cannibalism. But I do wonder how things are going over there economically.

    Years ago, I knew a guy who had been a diplomat in Romania (I think), and he told me that there was basically no functioning currency and the economy ran on unopened cartons of American cigarettes.

  59. 59.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @New Deal democrat: Yep. They’re whining that the federal government should step in and fix the SVB collapse. Guess what, boneheads, they did. FDIC covered all depositors for $250k, per regulations. If an individual depositor has more than that, well, I can’t help you avoid the consequences of your decisions. The only ones I wonder about are the small businesses that could make a case that they need more than that to make monthly payroll. Still, there’s ways to avoid that, too. For instance, WTF would you have all of payroll (over $250) in an unsecured position? Not my forte, could be good reasons for that.

    The bigwigs and shareholders got wiped out. THAT’s what all the whining is about. Hell, they’re whining that Yellen was in Ukraine (when was that?) and that the feds are treating this like a smallish, local disaster (like East Palestine – send in Buttageig!).

    Fuck ’em. If they want Yellen to come in and devise new controls over dude-bro banksters, sure, brang it on, baby! Start by throwing a bunch of them in jail, just for shits a grins, until “all of this is figured out.”

    ETA: Autocorrect + no coffee has consequences!!

  62. 62.

    mali muso

    @Tony Jay: Thanks for filling us in. I saw some tweets about this that I wasn’t quite following. Do I understand correctly that the Beeb has also censored a nature documentary because it might upset right wing snowflakes?

  64. 64.

    Kay

    I keep telling people it’s a good economy but the media drumbeat that it’s a bad economy is hard to overcome.

    I can’t imagine what people will do when we actually get into a bad cycle with high unemployment – which will happen at some point. Media has fucked up the whole ordinary comparison basis. They’ll be like screaming and rending their garments when we experience an ACTUAL bad economy.

    My 20 year old is under the impression that he is in extraordinarly high demand although he has zero skills and seems to me to spend most of his time at work making friends, and it’s true- he is- because they simply don’t have enough workers. He has no experience other than this booming economy.

  68. 68.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

     

    So if we imagine a picture of a guy in clothes that gradually morph from pants and shirt, to priestly robes, to kilt, to skirt, where exactly is the line where our MAGA viewer suddenly shouts, “Oy vey! Drag!” and demands that the man on the screen be jailed?

    the line is party registration, iokiyar,

    — TN governor Bill Lee

    Rep. Scott DesJarlais (TN-04) adds lots of other iokiyar

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor

    Actually, LaGuardia has gotten a long overdue makeover (both terminals and plane taxiing). Not only pleasant now, one could venture to say the interior is pretty.

  71. 71.

    New Deal democrat

    @Chief Oshkosh: I have a feeling we will be dealing with this issue a lot more in the coming weeks and months.

    Without going back and trying to find my long-form posts about bailouts from 2008, the very simplified answer is: “If the taxpayer has to bail out or rescue your business because of your poor decisions, the taxpayer now *owns* your business, either via a loan that you must pay back, or a controlling shareholder stake.” That’s how FDR did it in the 1930s, and how Obama and Geithner failed to do it in 2009.

  72. 72.

    JMG

    Some other bank will purchase (really get for free) SVB from the FDIC. SVB’s stockholders will be wiped out, bondholders take a haircut, depositors become customers of the new bank. This was something that happened many times a week during the Great Financial Crisis, but memories are short. The tech guys who’re whining doubtless have SVB stock and bonds in their portfolios.

  75. 75.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   The WaPost, under new editor Clickbait Sally Buzbee, is giving Pitchbot a run for his money.

    The strong job market is becoming its own worst enemy

    Be afraid! And here’s a bunch of economists and Charles Schwab’s managing director to scream about inflation.

    No working person on the street was interviewed in the writing of this article. They’re probably too busy at their JOB.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chief Oshkosh: My understanding is that a lot of startups were actually required to put all their cash in SVB as a condition set by investors.

    If all of them go under simultaneously and dump their employees on the job market because their cash holdings evaporated with SVB, that is a wider economic crisis. So I do understand quite well the reasoning behind asking the federal government to bail them out. It’s not just a bunch of billionaire CEOs who have a bad day.

    But I’m also not a libertarian who complained about Obama bailing out “Government Motors” and likes to bloviate about getting big government out of the way of creative destruction. I think that if we’re going to have capitalism, keeping it from wrecking everyone is part of the government’s job.

    (Disclosure: as a tech-industry guy I am speaking with some personal interest here. I can lose my job for a while and I’ll be fine, but that’s not true of everyone in these firms.)

  77. 77.

    Ken

    Those economic comparisons are a little unfair. The Republican administrations often have periods of fairly good business and job growth, but they’re offset because every one of them has also had a massive recession during their term. Just terrible bad luck, I guess.

    Their terrible deficits, on the other hand, are deliberate policy.

  78. 78.

    tobie

    Manchin is being a dick and opposing Biden’s nominee for Asst Sec of Land Management. He chairs the committee for energy and natural resources so he can block the nomination. He also managed to scuttle Biden’s nominee Gigi Sohn to lead the FCC. With Fetterman absent, Dems didn’t have the votes to approve the appointment.

    Contrary to AL’s diary yesterday, I will cheer for Fetterman when he does the right thing and steps down as Senator because he is unable to perform his job, not when his comms team releases a photo spread designed to elicit the response it got here. His comms team’s move was Trumpian–i.e., propaganda

  81. 81.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Were we married at some point?  My dad told the kreplach joke probably a thousand times, and he was the only person I’d ever known to even mention it until now.

    And I’m really, really old right now.

    (Probably why I can’t remember the whole marriage thing.)

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @sab: I am straight cis female very comfortable in my gender but I sure don’t want to have to go back to wearing skirts and stockings.

    That’s all right, the plan calls for wimples and habits, color-coded by marriage and fertility status.

    (“It wasn’t meant as a blueprint, dammit!” — Margaret Atwood.)

  83. 83.

    tobie

    @Baud: Fetterman was in the hospital early in February; he then went back. By my count he’s been out for at least four weeks, and his comms team said it will still be weeks till he returns to the Hill. I have sympathy for his struggle and hope he gets well. But everyday he’s absent, he hurts the admin and gives Manchin untold power. The brave thing to do is to resign.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @tobie: Biden would wait for those nominees if he just had to wait for Fetterman to come back.  Sohn has been pending for almost two years.  She wasn’t going to get confirmed.  I don’t know about the other one.  I don’t think we should set a standard that our people have to resign if they have a medical condition that takes them away from the job for a few weeks.

  86. 86.

    Elizabelle

    @tobie:  I think it’s silly that Senators away from the Senate floor for good reason — ie., hospitalization, or severe family issues — cannot vote electronically.

    If someone is unconscious from a stroke or accident (or on the verge of death, as comes for nonagenarians, etc.), that’s another issue.

    A lot of Senate rules date to the horse and buggy era.  Our communications infrastructure has improved incredibly since then.

  87. 87.

    Mousebumples

    @BlueGuitarist: I think WaterGirl has more addresses! 😂

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Haha, let’s just blame DeJoy. He’s a great fall guy for that sort of thing. If you think you’ll need more than 50 postcards, overall, there are some great options on Etsy, or else Postcard Patriots has designs you can print.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I have NEVER seen such a strong economy in this rural rustbelt county, and that includes the glorified 1990s economy. Never. They have bidding wars for low skill workers- you’ll see a billboard offering 12.50 and then 2 miles later one offering 17.

    It’s amusing to me because we’re (supposedly) having yet another discussion about the trials and travails of white working class in rural rust belt areas with the train derailment and this insane narrative they have going where it’s all poverty and hopelessness is just wrong right now. They’re doing WELL compared to anything in the last 30 years. My middle son is an industrial “high voltage” electrician. He is hoping he gets laid off because he has been working overtime for the last three years. He wants 2 days in a row off. Biden (especially) and Obama before him (to a lesser extent) have been very, very good for white working class. Anyone who says different does not live in these places or spend any time in them. Better than Clinton, who was not bad at all compared to Reagan.

  90. 90.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    The emergency banking act did set up a regulatory regime and some executive powers in an emergency, but it didn’t allow the government to take over the banks.
    Also too TARP involved 700 banks, and for about 600 of them the taxpayers made a profit on the payback.  I think there were losses on about 100 banks but overall we made money on the bailouts.

  91. 91.

    tobie

    @Baud: Fetterman’s stay in the hospital is already past the point of a few weeks. The question is how many months he will be out of action. PA deserves two Senators to fight for the state. The Democrats who worked for a Dem Senate majority deserve a full-time Senator. No one is entitled to a Senate seat. If Fetterman can’t fulfill his duties, he should quit.

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: A lot of airports are getting upgrades, and money from the Infrastucture bill is funding them in whole or in part. Same with mass transit and AMTRAK..

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Michael Bersin:

    Ohio Republicans are trying the same thing- taking it to a 60 per cent super majority because they know Ohians will overturn the abortion ban if it’s on the ballot.

    I think they can probably get 60 though to overturn though, and it probably will be on the ballot. But still. They know their policies are unpopular. They have to thwart any kind of democratic process to keep their laws in place.

  95. 95.

    New Deal democrat

    @Baud: You are correct, that FDIC insurance was the biggest innovation, and with the exception of investment banks in 2008, completely obliterated the problem of bank runs in the US.

    I remember that there were insolvent banks which were taken over by the USG in the 1930s, but I don’t remember the details, beyond that the taxpayers via the FDIC owned the banks; the shareholders were not bailed out. As you can probably appreciated, due to link rot it’s almost impossible to find stuff I wrote back then.

    But I did find one post I wrote, citing to a NYT piece on how Sweden handled its banking crisis. Here’s what I quoted then, and it is just as applicable now in case there is contagion from the SVB failure (and I suspect there may be, because if I am a CFO of a corporation of any significant size, I want to know by Monday whether my company has accounts far in excess of $250k at any bank with a profile like SVB, and if so, I want those accounts trimmed and spread out. Now multiply by all the companies doing that, and you see the problem.)

    Anyway, here was the Swedish solution:
    “A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?  It does to Sweden…..But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing.

    “Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.  That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.
    ….
    “A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.
    ….
    “By the end of the crisis, the Swedish government had seized a vast portion of the banking sector, and the agency had mostly fulfilled its hard-nosed mandate to drain share capital before injecting cash. When markets stabilized, the Swedish state then reaped the benefits by taking the banks public again.”

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    @HinTN

    And buses. Many, many buses. Not sure but believe the bus from LGA directly to Woodside (long ride) where one can pick up various subways and the LIRR is still free of charge, assuming one can find it in the first pl;ace to board.

    Not so fun fact. There is a bus from LGA to midtown Manhattan (ka-ching) designed to be a connection to another bus to Newark airport (ka-ching again). Thing is there’s a 2½ block walk (with any luggage, mind you) from Bus #! to Bus #2. If the weather is at all inclement, fuhgedaboutit.

  97. 97.

    Tony Jay

    Sorry, I’ve been away watching Liverpool throw away all the good work of humiliating Manchester United 7-0 last week by losing 1-0 to bottom of the league Bournemouth. That’s our season in a fucking nutshell.

    Well, I wasn’t watching Match of the Day anyway…

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @tobie: Fetterman will be back soon, I believe. He won’t be out for months. I expect he and his doctors are already working on his after-care plan.

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @tobie: I think it’s premature, and I wouldn’t adopt the same standard for someone who had a physical health condition rather than a mental health condition.  If there is evidence that his temporary absence is harming the Senate Dems, I’ll reconsider, but the nominee thing you raised isn’t enough.

  102. 102.

    stinger

    @Baud:

    I don’t think we should set a standard that our people have to resign if they have a medical condition that takes them away from the job for a few weeks.

    And you KNOW the Repubs would never do it. Why do we keep setting higher standards for Dems?

    The Family Medical Leave Act gives people 12 weeks of leave for serious health conditions; that seems a reasonable period to allow Fetterman, especially since he continues to perform some of his job responsibilities. (NB: I am not a Pennsylvania voter.)

  103. 103.

    Michael Bersin

    @Kay:

    It’s ironic, republicans preach local and state control, then craft their Democracy destroying legislation to consolidate their power from central repositories of right wingnut “policy”.

  104. 104.

    Tony Jay

    @mali muso:

    David Attenborough’s six part series about Britain’s natural environment has been cut down to five episodes because the last one deals with pollution and climate change and rewilding and BBC execs decided this would be an unconscionable provocation to Rightwing lobby groups and politicians, so they’ve shunted it to online only viewing.

    Their excuse is it was always supposed to be a 5 episode series, the series creators and Attenborough say different.

    Who to believe?

  105. 105.

    tobie

    @Geminid: How do you know? Last week, before Fetterman’s PR team released their photo spread, they issued a statement saying people should expect it will take several weeks before Fetterman returns to work. The statement caused a bit of an uproar in local media in PA, so his comms team released the photos and statements that AL posted yesterday to assuage fears about his health. The whole thing reminded me of the photo shoot of Trump in Walter Reed.

  106. 106.

    gene108

    This Simon Rosenberg fellow misses a crucial point. The last two Democratic presidents did not have their terms end in horrible recessions. This creates an uneven playing field, where Democrats pickup the post-recession economic recovery that makes job gains seem outsized.

    Bush, Sr. and Trump were never given the chance to work through a recovery, while Bush, Jr. would be out of office due to term limits. If Bush, Sr. was re-elected in 1992, he’d have benefited from the economic recovery Bill Clinton inherited. Bush, Sr.’s job growth figures would be much better.

    Trump had enjoyed record low unemployment until 2020, when an overreaction to a respiratory virus caused the global economy to go into free fall. Thankfully President Trump and Senate Republicans rushed through strong counter-cyclical bills, like the CARES Act, which provided a cushion for people, as we started realizing how overblown the panic in March and April 2020 was. Responsible governors and states quickly moved to reopen businesses, which helped give a needed boost to the economy.

    Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to counteract the Democrat run states that were hell bent on killing the American economy, as they remained in lockdowns far longer than was reasonable.

    Such biased cherry picking of facts, without context, makes writers like Simon truly dangerous. He poisons the public discourse with his publishing selectively edited information.

    //- If you wish to learn more about how the Left lies with “facts”, please subscribe to my Substack news letter.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I feel like it’s a kind of excuse making for young white working class men in conservative areas. I don’t know why they aren’t working and why they can’t move out of their parents house but it is not “the economy” and in rural rust belt areas in Ohio it is not “housing costs” either. That 17 dollar an hour unskilled job is enough to move out on here. I think Right wingers need to look elsewhere to figure out why their boys aren’t launching. Blaming liberals or immigrants or women or “wokeness” is not addressing the problem and there is a problem. 

    Obama had a program for all 8 years when he was President for training in manufacturing. They could go to community colleges for free and get 1 or 2 year certificates in skills that are applicable HERE, where they live It included a GAS CARD – a recognition that rural people have to drive everywhere. The spots went begging. Young rural white men in this blood-red county didn’t take the opportunity. They haven’t jumped on this booming econmy either and that’s not the fault of women or immigrants or wokeness.

  109. 109.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: This idea that a state legislature should be able to rule as an oligarchy with total power including the ability to prevent themselves from ever being voted out seems very Jim Crow to me.

    The initiative process can become absurd–what they have in California where every ballot has dozens of referenda on it seems like too much to me, and I know people who just habitually vote no on all of them as a protest against the process. But in most states it’s not like that.

  110. 110.

    Elizabelle

    @tobie:  FWIW, I am never sure what “several weeks” or “a couple of weeks” (is that automatically two??) means.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Michael Bersin:

    It’s funny in Ohio because they get TROUNCED with initiatives. We see like 60/40 results.

    They’re in those gerrymandered, protected seats just safe as houses and they want it to stay that way.

    They’re anti-competitive

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I actually think it’s a real “anxiety” for Trump voters in their 50s and 60s. Their kids aren’t doing well, more specifically, their SONS aren’t doing well. But rather than honestly ask why that is and look to their families or lifestyle or communities or whatever, the blame this whole list of distant liberal boogeymen. It just isn’t going to fix their young men. I don’t have a fix either but keening and moaning and blaming out of touch liberals is not a fix.

  118. 118.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    They bemoan the loss of mandatory prayer time in school. Which their sons used to pray to get laid.
    //

  119. 119.

    tobie

    @Elizabelle: This is what his comms director said on Feb 27. “Weeks” was the chosen phrase:

    “We understand the intense interest in John’s status and especially appreciate the flood of well-wishes,” Fetterman’s communications director, Joe Calvello, said in a statement Monday afternoon. “However, as we have said this will be a weeks-long process and while we will be sure to keep folks updated as it progresses, this is all there is to give by way of an update.”

  121. 121.

    Tony Jay

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Unlikely in the short term. The Tories own Brexit and would split down the middle if they tried sanity. The recent Northern Ireland deal (which basically just gives NI privileged access to the European market that the rest of the UK doesn’t have anymore) is about as far as they can go, and that was more about sticking it to Flobalob anyway, plus it required the immediate deployment of Stop The Boats red-meat to placate the Little Englanders, and that’s blown up on them.  Chances are they’re not going to be in power after next year anyway.

    The Nu-Lab Corporate Franchise Opportunity Formerly Known As The Labour Party aren’t much better. It’s led by the very same people who spent the period 2016-19 screaming and howling that the previous leadership just needed to ‘get off the fence’ and ‘provide leadership’ to marshal a vast anti-Brexit majority at the polls, and attempts to keep pro-Brexit Labour voters onside (while blocking Theresa May’s various Brexit deals) was basically treason, doing untold damage to Labour’s election chances in the process.

    Only when Labour did lose the election and they took over, they did a 180, rejected any talk of the benefits of EU membership, abandoned the very idea of marshalling an anti-Brexit majority, went hard on winning back pro-Brexit Labour voters with culture war verbiage, and announced that anything other than fence-straddling opaqueness on the topic of Brexit was guaranteed to doom Labour’s electoral chances. Almost like they never meant what they’d previously been saying and were just using Brexit for the short term aim of sabotaging their own Party at the ballot box.

    Their basic theme is “Trust us, we’re only lying to everyone else”. No thanks.

  122. 122.

    Scout211

    @tobie: I understand your frustration but I don’t agree with your conclusion.

    Those of us in California have been equally frustrated by our senior Senator who has not been 100% for the last year or more. She has relied on her staff to manage her office for far too long. She has finally announced that she will not run for re-election. Thank goodness.  But she has been essentially absent from the senate for much longer than Fetterman has.  She had many of us hoping for and calling for her resignation but she continued to refuse.

    It’s not our decision to make as voters whether our senators resign during an illness or disability. It’s up to the Senator to decide whether they can continue to perform in the office. I’m not sure if senators are covered by the ADA, but telling an employee to resign after a physical or mental health hospitalization does violate the ADA.

    However, I do understand your frustration. But I don’t agree with your conclusion.  Maybe when it’s been over a year that he’s been essentially absent from his senate duties, I can be  more supportive of a call for his resignation.  But not now. It is far, far too soon to call for him to step down. YMMV

    ETA: edited for clarity and spelling

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @tobie: Obviously, I don’t know. I am going by public statements by Fetterman’s staff and also Governor Shapiro, who says he is not considering a possible replacement for the Senator because he expects Fetterman to return to the Senate, and before too long.

    Fetterman did not suffer a mental health crisis, but rather recognized that his depression was hampering him in the duties he performed right up until the time he chose inpatient treatment. I think he could be taking floor votes and participating in committee hearings next week if they were crucial, but they are not and he and his doctors are wisely extending his stay at Walter Read to get him on a firmer footing before his return to active Senate life. I will be very surprised if he does not return before the end of this month.

    Edit: And to some extent, I am going by my own past experience with deep depression. Recovery was slow, but people do not have to recover completely to function adequately. Self recognition and a good support system makes that possible.

  125. 125.

    New Deal democrat

    @Baud: The big difference was (trying to clear away the cobwebs in my brain here), when the FDIC takes over a bank, Senior management and the Board are out, replaced by others chosen by the FDIC. In 2008, since it was Investment Banks, the FDIC did not apply, and Senior management, the Board, and controlling shareholders were all left intact (from which Wall Street learned that they did not have to change their ways one iota).

  126. 126.

    JMG

    Fetterman has been a Senator for 77 days, not 35 years like Feinstein. Like it or not, Senators and Representatives are not employees of their political party. If he is confident he will be able to resume his duties in due course, so be it.

  127. 127.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    I think we all known that’s entirely my level.

     

    @mali muso:

    I know. David Attenborough or the man who arranged an £800,000 slush fund for Flobalob just before being appointed to the job of Chairman of a national broadcaster he thinks should be broken up and sold off?

    Tricky one.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    Anti-choicers are deveoping a great new tool to allow abusive men to control their partners, even after the partners divorce them:

    A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer. Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park. The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives. Silva alleges that his now ex-wife learned she was pregnant in July 2022, the month after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and conspired with two friends to illegally obtain abortion-inducing medication and terminate the pregnancy.

    Not surprising though- the anti choice movement supported Herschel Walker and Donald Trump – two men who are abusive towards women. They actively support domestic violence.
    Look out ladies! The religious monitors of American women are hiding in your shrubs, waiting to paw through your trash and call the abortion police on you.

  129. 129.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Kay: granted this isn’t rural but the pay for low skilled jobs in Phoenix is crazy. I routinely see big signs at McDonalds/,Taco Bell fast food places offering $14-15/hr. There’s a new place near me which has an 18/hr sign. These were the minimum wage no benefit crappy benefit jobs a few years ago. Then there’s manufacturing job with some minimal training where they offer $20-$25/ hr with full benefits. I have a friend whose husband works cleaning planes at night for $25/ hr with good benefits.

  130. 130.

    tobie

    @Scout211: The situations are not parallel. Feinstein shows up to vote. What she can’t do is negotiate legislative initiatives behind the scenes. Fetterman isn’t doing either, and he’s hurting his colleague Bob Casey who will be hammered in his 2024 campaign about his fitness for service given his prostate cancer. Republicans will air commercial after commercial saying that Pennsylvanians deserve two Senators fighting for them daily and don’t have that with Fetterman and Casey.

  131. 131.

    Baud

    @tobie: They will run against Casey anyway.  And Fetterman will be back well before the 2024 campaign season is underway

    ETA:  I don’t know what the medical protocol for depression, but can’t Fetterman show up to vote if the Dems tell him his vote is necessary.

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @tobie: If he broken his leg or had appendicitis would you still be calling for his resignation?  When did you start calling for Gabby Giffords’ resignation. That took about a year from the shooting and she wasn’t even able to any of her job.  From what I understand, Fetterman is keeping up with Senate business while he is in treatment.

  133. 133.

    Nelle

    @sab: Yes, until 1971, dresses or skirts in all school settings.  I was one of those agitating for change at my small Mennonite college.  Those miniskirts weren’t exactly modest.

  134. 134.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: I think I’d remember the marriage?

    Neither I nor my wife is Jewish, but our dads were. Hers introduced her to a lot of the Jewish culture, including lots of these creaky old jokes.

    If you know the jokes these punchlines go to, I’m going to be really worried that we’re related:

    “Who ordered the clean fork?”

    “You told it wrong”

    “Schlemiel! You missed your bus!”

  135. 135.

    tobie

    @Geminid: Fetterman’s comms director is Jon Cavelho who lied repeatedly about the severity of his stroke. I don’t believe anything he says.

    Shapiro is saying what he thinks is best to say for the state party. That’s it. Maybe Fettterman will return to the Senate in April. Whatever the case he will be there in the same capacity as Feinstein: as a vote for the Biden admin, not as someone who ferrets out valuable info in hearings or committees or advances creative legislative initiatives.

  136. 136.

    Layer8Problem

    @NotMax:  Hm, sounds like something that could be fixed with a subway extension from one of the Queens lines to LGA.  Should take, oh, forty years minimum.  I might live to see it!

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I think housing costs are a legit barrier – I don’t know what housing costs are in Phoenix- but they are affordable here. They could buy a house on 20 an hour here. I do think they’re in trouble, young white rural men, I just don’t know why.

    I was just in Arizona. We went to Sedona which was fine- filled with midwestern retirees so people exaclty like us (a little too much) but we ended up going to the Grand Canyon and staying there because it was so amazing and kind of more..diverse. Families and kids and olds and tourists from all over the world. We did do red rocks hiking in Sedona, at a state park, which was lovely and my husband played lots of tennis. I’m a gardener and I love to learn new trees and plants so I was identifying like crazy. High desert trees are cool.

  140. 140.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: Pennsylvania’s first Jewish governor started out as a Shapiro, but changed his name when he took a job as an electronics salesman in the late 1930s.

    Milton Shapiro had an electrical engineering degree from what is now Case Western Reserve University, but he graduated into the Depression and was working as a truck driver, hauling coal, when the job in Pennsylvania came up. Not wanting the pervasive anti-Semitism of the time to handicap him, Shapiro changed his name to Milton Schapp.

    After serving in the Army Signal Corps during the Second World War, Shapp started an electronics company that made him a millionaire by the late 1950s. He was an influential donor to the Democratic Party before he ran for Governor of Pennsylvania.

  143. 143.

    tobie

    @Geminid: Jentleson is just as bad as Cavelho. Maybe worse. I don’t trust populists, and followed Jentleson’s twitter feed long enough to know that he’s untrustworthy.

  144. 144.

    Elizabelle

    @tobie:  So glad to see you here!  That said:

    [portraying Fetterman] not as someone who ferrets out valuable info in hearings or committees or advances creative legislative initiatives.

    Disagree.  A lot of that is staff work as well.  We don’t know that his Senate colleagues aren’t keeping in touch with him.  We know his staff is on the job (albeit, they’re staff for a new member).   Fetterman under a cloud of depression is vastly different from Feinstein, who cannot remember a discussion ten minutes later.

    He’s got Adam Jentleson, Harry Reid’s former comms director, as his Chief of Staff.  AJ has lots of ears on the ground, connections and experience.  [ETA:  OK, I see that you’re not wild about AJ.  Whose experience prior to H Reid was John Kerry and John Edwards.]

    I’m good with giving Fetterman time to recover.  He is better than Sinema any day of the week.  Don’t they have a Spring break coming up soon, anyway?

    PA voters voted for Fetterman knowing he had suffered a stroke. This is a follow-on effect.  If he becomes genuinely incapacitated, that’s another issue.  Not there yet.

  145. 145.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    where exactly is the line where our MAGA viewer suddenly shouts, “Oy vey! Drag!”

    Excellent question, William!  The answer is that it’s a scale, not a line.  They are increasingly uncomfortable the farther you get from jeans and a t-shirt.  Well before you hit robes or kilts they’re convinced you’re gay and/or a freak, and will violently attack you for it if they think they can get away with it.  Hell, wear the wrong color and see what happens.  It is a brutally conformist culture insecure in its masculinity to the point of paranoia and rage.

  146. 146.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Thiel may have had a bunch of puts on short sales laying around out there prior to making his announcement and started the run. SVB was essentially sound prior – plenty of performing assets were in hand, but they were illiquid and in the form of mortgages, loans etc.

    As I understand it, the culture of tech VC was to demand that your holdings be placed in SVB if you obtained VC financing, likely as a transparency and control function.

    Thiel, as usual, “disrupted” and fucked up the works, and like everything else tech related, the weird nerds followed and then sparked mainstream panic.

    I know it’s not a popular opinion in these parts, but weird nerds have gotten way ahead of themselves, and I ascribe it to the stamping out of peer based social correction of the goofier instincts of weird nerds in middle and high schools.

    Had assholes like Elon Musk, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Peter Theil gotten their heads flushed in a toilet a couple of times a week, every week when they said stupid things, they might have learned to be quieter, better people.

  147. 147.

    Layer8Problem

    @Elizabelle:  Supposedly some pilots call it the “USS LaGuardia”, from the short runways and proximity to water giving it that aircraft carrier feel.

  148. 148.

    Mousebumples

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yay, success!

    WaterGirl is throwing up a thread at 745pm eastern (blog time)/645pm central time. Basically, it’s a place to talk about postcards and ask questions – and usually there are a few people posting music links. Brendancalling might also have some music content, I think?

    We do one at the same time on Saturdays & Tuesdays. Hope you can make some of those this month!

  149. 149.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @New Deal democrat:

    Here’s what I quoted then, and it is just as applicable now in case there is contagion from the SVB failure (and I suspect there may be, because if I am a CFO of a corporation of any significant size, I want to know by Monday whether my company has accounts far in excess of $250k at any bank with a profile like SVB, and if so, I want those accounts trimmed and spread out. Now multiply by all the companies doing that, and you see the problem.)

    Commenters in an earlier thread were telling me this was a run of the mill bank run and nothing special

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: In the Sixties they were freaked out by the gender nonconformity of men growing their hair long. These days they seem to be over that one–you can have long hair if you’re a good MAGA blockhead.

  152. 152.

    tobie

    @Elizabelle: Good to see you too. We will have to disagree on this. Fetterman has never struck me as someone who is quick on the uptake…and I’ve been watching him since he first campaigned for the Senate in 2016 and became Lt Gov in 2018.

    ETA: Recess would be great for giving Fetterman more time to recover without missing votes.

  153. 153.

    Geminid

    @tobie:I’ve also found some things Jentleson has said problematic. But I don’t assume that Fetterman is taking a “populist” track as Senator, and so far I’ve seen no evidence that he is anything other than a loyal team player.

    But that is a different matter than Fetterman’s current disability. I think your pessimism is unwarranted when you say that maybe he’ll return in April. This is not a betting site but if it were, I’d put my Jackal bucks on the proposition that Fetterman will be back on the Senate floor by March 31.

  155. 155.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    One other thing – I’m seeing that some online merchants use processors that clear their accounts through SVB, so there are some problems (Etsy was a notable). Also, I saw that 25% of Roku’s cash holdings are with SVB (probably part of their funding mandate). That’ll cause pain.

    There are going to be lots of blown payrolls this month.

  156. 156.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @NotMax:

    They’re joshing you.

    @Nelle:

    Those miniskirts weren’t exactly modest.

    As a plot point one of my heroines is in a girls’ disciplinary school with a classic school uniform, and it has been a minor headache not making it sound like fetish wear.  I made the colors drab, added a sweater vest, and just generally try not to mention skirt length.  I saw some actual high schoolers in the street in uniforms and was like “How can that be real!?”

  162. 162.

    gene108

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Commenters in an earlier thread were telling me this was a run of the mill bank run and nothing special

    The older people get, the less patient they become.

    They get tired and cranky more easily.

  163. 163.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Just out of curiosity, do the anti-drag laws cover broadcasts of Mary Martin’s performance as Peter Pan. I always thought she was very fetching in those tights.

    Do you guys not have panto over there? They are mostly Christmas plays for young children, such as Aladdin or Dick Whitington. The hero is a boy, but always played by a woman. The other requirement is the Dame, who is a matronly woman played by a man. I suppose so long as it’s not sexy it’s all OK? The problem would seem to be how to work out what it is that Republicans find sexy.

  166. 166.

    Steeplejack

    @Tony Jay:

    I’m somewhat late to the thread, but I’m currently watching Leicester City-Chelsea on the USA network, and there are announcers announcing and commenters commenting (at halftime). Do they use different announcers for the U.S. broadcasts? At halftime it’s Rebecca Lowe and her usual guys. Dunno who is actually calling the match.

  167. 167.

    gene108

    I read part of the issue banks have, including SVB, is they invested in low yield long term treasury bonds, in 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were essentially zero.

    With the spate of interest rate hikes by the Fed, the bonds aren’t yielding enough to offset the interest rates. Banks are carrying balances of unrealized losses in their books from these bonds, which reduces the value of these assets on the balance sheet. It shows banks as being under capitalized.

  168. 168.

    Layer8Problem

    @Viva BrisVegas: ” ​Do you guys not have panto over there?”
    The performance-friendly bar I frequent does. I believe the performers are familiar with all pantomime traditions.

  169. 169.

    kalakal

     

    @Tony Jay:  Oh it’s getting better

    The BBC were planning to use the Premier Leagues Global commentary service, so they could show matches with commentary. Not so fast says the League, you ain’t got the rights

    The BBC does not have the rights to use the Premier League’s global commentary feed, the Athletic reports.

    After contributors from across the BBC’s sports coverage withdrew their services in solidarity with Lineker, the corporation announced that Match of the Day would air without presenters or pundits and would instead “focus on match action”.

    It had been speculated that the BBC intended to use the commentary feed provided by the Premier League for broadcasters outside the UK.

     

    As well as the spineless hypocrisy eg Alan Sugar presents a BBC show, praise Johnson, bashes Mick Lynch, his co-presenter is a Tory member of the House of Lords and nary a peep from the “impartiality crusaders” there’s a very series problem for Sunak’s all singing, all dancing trade deal and Gary, and the hysterical reaction to him, has dragged it screaming into the headlights. Basically their new asylum policy is flat out illegal under international and EU law and if you look at the small print the EU can, any time it likes, just cancel the deal. The Tories, aided by the msm, did not want this known. That ship has well and truly sailed. Sunak has a choice, crater his trade deal and the economy, or dial back the xenophobia and lose his job as the yahoos revolt . Either way, he and the Tories have fucked this up big time.

    The best bit is there is no distraction big enough to shift attention away. When you’ve pissed off every football fan in the country ( ok Man U can do this every week ) there is no where to shift the headlines to

    Trade deal scrapped

  170. 170.

    kalakal

    @Steeplejack: Yes, the Premier League has a global commentary service for overseas watchers. The BBC were planning to use but turns out the don’t have the rights.

    see 169

  171. 171.

    Steeplejack

    @kalakal:

    Thanks. Once again I was misled by all the British accents. I should have known better, because occasionally Lowe and the guys do halftime simulcasts from various U.S. cities.

  172. 172.

    kalakal

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Off topic a bit but as well as the SVB thing I put up a reply in the previous thread about you’re lovely new watch, specifically about the bracelet you might find interesting. post 154 I think.

    Apologies if it’s just telling you what you already know

  173. 173.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Do you guys not have panto over there? They are mostly Christmas plays for young children, such as Aladdin or Dick Whitington. The hero is a boy, but always played by a woman. The other requirement is the Dame, who is a matronly woman played by a man.

    No, we don’t. At least not as a widespread holiday tradition. I’ve heard of it as a strange Britishism.

  174. 174.

    VOR

    @Matt McIrvin:  My understanding is that a lot of startups were actually required to put all their cash in SVB as a condition set by investors.

    SVB’s strength was the relationships it had with VCs, with CEOs, and generally movers and shakers in the tech world. People do business with people they know and VCs knew SVB. The San Francisco Chronicle reports SVB also served the niche of financing California wineries.

    Quote from a Moody’s report on March 10, 2023 saying they expect uninsured depositors to get back 80-90% of their money. Eventually, but not right away.

    The key drivers of SVB’s failure was significant interest rate and asset liability management risks and weak governance. The significant deterioration in SVB’s funding and profitability profile reflects high risk in its financial strategy and risk management. The downgrade of the long-term bank deposit rating to Caa2 reflects an expected recovery rate of 80-90% for uninsured depositors. The downgrade of the Counterparty Risk Rating (CRR) to Caa3 reflects an expected recovery rate of 65-80% and the other ratings which were downgraded to C reflects an expected recovery rate of less than 35%. The FDIC created a bridge bank, Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB) and at the time of closing, the FDIC as receiver immediately transferred all insured deposits of Silicon Valley Bank to DINB where banking activities will resume no later than Monday. The FDIC as receiver will retain all assets from the bank for later disposition. Uninsured depositors will receive a partial payment from the FDIC within the next week and may receive additional payments in the future as the FDIC sells the assets of the bank.

  175. 175.

    kalakal

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Panto is great. It’s also the ultimate family show, we’ve been dragging our kids to watch drag queens for centuries. I loved them as a kid.

  176. 176.

    New Deal democrat

    @James E Powell: That’s a good piece; thanks for posting the link.

    Here are the several paragraphs I found most informative:

    “There was a run on SVB in part because there hasn’t been a big bank run in a while, and people — venture capitalists, startups [me: *who had way more than 250k deposited at SVB”]— were naturally worried that they might lose their deposits if their bank failed. Then the bank failed.“If it turns out to be true that they lose their deposits, there could be more bank runs: Lots of businesses keep uninsured deposits at lots of banks, and if the moral of SVB is “your uninsured transaction-banking deposits can vanish overnight” then those businesses will do a lot more credit analysis, move their money out of weaker banks, and put it at, like, JPMorgan. This could be self-fulfillingly bad for a lot of weaker banks.”

    “the traditional price for that sort of rescue is ‘we will buy your exchange, make sure that all your customers are made whole, and give you a Snickers bar in exchange for 100% of the equity.’”

    The SVB failure could be a big nothingburger. One issue is, as I wrote above, corporations start pulling their cash above $250k on deposit from banks whose lending profile “looks like” SVB, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one which the FDIC is well-equipped to handle.

    What we don’t want is contagion from Banking Street to Main Street. The bigger issue is if a bunch of otherwise perfectly good companies that had deposits with SVB also start to fail because their operating capital has been wiped out. Here the Fed stepping in as the “lender of last resort” with bridge loans that must be paid back with interest would be the solution. 

  178. 178.

    Matt McIrvin

    @VOR: Is that “expectation” in the statistical sense of “maybe 100% and maybe much less, with a distribution that averages out to 80-90% over the ensemble” or is it a narrower range of expectation?

  181. 181.

    Jackie

    @stinger: “The Family Medical Leave Act gives people 12 weeks of leave for serious health conditions”

    Beat me to it. I haven’t seen/read any complaints from PA voters – unlike the voters from Santos’ district.

    Also haven’t heard any mutterings from DiFi’s district – who’s absent due to shingles… not any from KY, who has a concussed senator…

  182. 182.

    kalakal

    The BBC’s sport presenter woes are over!

    //ssss

    The wonderful Joe Lycett has a plan

    Lycett is ready

    For those of you who don’t know Lycett he is the master of straight faced sarcasm.

    Here he is on Lettuce Liz’s economic

    Wizardry

  183. 183.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay:

    I do think they’re in trouble, young white rural men, I just don’t know why.

    You have such a good heart. I wish I could ramp up my empathy for these people. Could it be because rightwing media has scared them off from entering the real world? Not helped by parents internalizing RW media messages, either.

    JD Fuckwad and that shithead small paper editor from Ohio and all the other RW scolds told us for years, demanded, really, that we all try to study and understand the rural populace, especially conservatives in that good ol’ “heartland.” Well guess what: we did. And we don’t like what we see. They’re their own worst enemies, and no matter what is done to help them, they are too fucking lazy, scared, and apparently stupid to just.do.anything.

    It’s too bad, but fuck ’em. We can’t let them drag the rest of us down. Resources are always limited. They need to be spent differently or elsewhere. One solution might be to fund escape programs. “Join up and learn a skill that takes you far, far away from East Bumfuck!” Similar to the military, but different. Possibly this will accelerate the decline so that, at the very least, those Congressional districts are lost due to depopulation.

    I know, wicked and mean of me, and likely counterproductive, but Christ on a pogo stick, these are the same sorts that I grew up with and now their kids and grandkids are, hard to imagine, even more lazy, more scared, and amazingly (to me), even more stupid. And resentful. And violent. And nihilistic.

    The people I REALLY have a lot of empathy for are those non-wacko, non-RW youngsters who are stuck in these places. If rural education continues to decline, it’s going to be tougher and tougher for them to get the hell out by going to college far, far away.

  185. 185.

    narya

    I now have a lot of pie in this thread . . .

    Meanwhile, on my rounds today I will be dropping off 20 postcards at the post office. I don’t know if I’m up for any more today, but will check in later if I am.

  187. 187.

    narya

    @Chief Oshkosh: And I blame the internets, too. Wait, wait, hear me out: IMHO, a lot of the crap that gets a lot of attention is the Insta-ready look-at-me-and-my-fabulosity, NONE of which is truly reality-based. THAT is supposed to be what “success” looks like, not $25/hr plus good benefits at a Regular Job. Regular Jobs don’t appear on social media (except at Jorts the Cat’s site . . .).

  188. 188.

    gwangung

    @tobie: I think you’re on a bug without any leg to stand on. This seems to be a conflation of depression as mental health problem with depression as a physical condition.

     

    That’s sloppy and muddy thinking. You’ve yet to demonstrate that this is a debilitating condition, relying instead on loose thinking on what should be happening instead of parallels on what medical experts are using.

  189. 189.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @kalakal:

    I saw that! NATO straps are good for military/field style watches. Ditto for pilot watches. My goal is to build a watch collection that has at least one example each of different styles of watch, like pilot, diver, dress, beater, chronograph, etc. I’ll probably collect different types of movements as well. Solar powered ones seem pretty cool, as well as the spring drive ones from Seiko.

    My grail watch is the Omega Speedmaster Professional.

  190. 190.

    PaulB

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  Commenters in an earlier thread were telling me this was a run of the mill bank run and nothing special

    Are you still harping on that? The process described in the post you responded to are exactly what happens in any “run of the mill bank run,” and are, in fact, “nothing special.”

    In any case, go back to that original thread and see the last couple of posts I added to give you some perspective.

  191. 191.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Matt McIrvin:

    My understanding is that a lot of startups were actually required to put all their cash in SVB as a condition set by investors.

    That’s correct. As a result, many of them my not be able to pay employees next week. And it turns out that other companies may not either because even though they didn’t do business with SVB, the company that handles their payroll used SVB and can’t access funds.

    Plus it turns out it’s also hitting many California wineries. Wineries have unique finances due to the years-long time between making capital investments (i.e. planting grape vines) and being to make money from them.

    I have a friend who works for the FDIC, and they’re very good about taking over failed banks during the weekend and reopening as a new bank on Mondays. The fact they they did so on a Friday afternoon is unusual and indicative how bad the problems were. They should start paying out the insured accounts up to $250K on Monday, and they will try to make whole the uninsured accounts. Goodness has nothing to do with it, it’s an attempt to prevent future bank runs — which is what brought down SVB.

    The good news is that unlike 2008, the investments SVB do have long-term value — but it will take 5-20 years for the bonds to mature and payoff their full price. Likely a very large bank with buy those assets at fire-sale prices because they can afford to hold them until they pay off.

    But short-term it likely will hurt on a lot of workers in tech who had nothing to do with any of the bad decisions by SVB and the CEOs who let their companies exceed insured cash levels. I know people who are wondering if they’ll get paid next week, and whether they’ll even have a job.

  192. 192.

    Elizabelle

    @Sister Golden Bear:   I have really appreciated all of you jackals helping to inform me on SVB (Silicon Valley Bank).

    I trust you more than the hyperventilating and clickbait purveyors among us.  (“If it bleeds … cash … it leads.”)

  194. 194.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Elizabelle:

    I trust you more than the hyperventilating and clickbait purveyors among us. (“If it bleeds. … cash …”)

    Is that supposed to be a jab at me?

    @PaulB:

    Reading through some of the responses of that thread and this one have reassured me some. I actually could’ve sworn I edited that comment you responded to out

  195. 195.

    kalakal

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    The spring drives are wonderful. I lean heavily towards dive watches but have a range. The Omega Speedmaster is a thing of beauty, I have an old Seamaster, before the redesign with the skeleton hands, which I love.

    I’ve bought quite a few second hand ( sorry! ) off sites like watchrecon which makes it a lot more affordable

  196. 196.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Just out of curiosity, do the anti-drag laws cover broadcasts of Mary Martin’s performance as Peter Pan. I always thought she was very fetching in those tights.

    Probably doesn’t cover movies and TV shows — although like with the anti-abortion laws, they’re intentionally written so vaguely that it’s hard to have a definitive answer. But it definitely outlaws many of Shakespeare’s plays and a host of other plays and musicals.

    I saw a post from a theater director who’s had to consult a lawyer to see what productions are new allowed.

  197. 197.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @tobie: If Republicans can wheel out senators on their deathbed for important votes, I’m confident that if needed, Fetterman will have a temporary supervised release to vote.

    You may not trust his comms people, but independent reporting indicates that he’s doing at least some work at the moment, with his staff picking up the rest. Similar to what’s happened when other legislators have been out for medical reasons.

  205. 205.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Sister Golden Bear: My daughter’s company, sort of tech-related, banked with SVB. They pulled their funds out Thursday, but right now she’s on a plane to LA for a video project which starts at 0800 Monday. Nobody has any idea how they’ll pay vendors/contractors next week.

  206. 206.

    Geminid

    Reuters reports that the FDIC took steps yesterday to keep Silicon Valley Bank’s staff intact for now:

    New York March 11 (Reuters):

        Silicon Valley Bank staff offered 45 days work at 1.5 times pay, FDIC email shows.

      Employees of Silicon Valley Bank were offered 45 days of work at one and one half times their salaries by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the U.S. regulator that took control of the collapsed lender Friday, according to an email to staff seen by Reuters.

  207. 207.

    Geminid

    @Gvg: I believe Governor Shapiro would appoint a successor if Senator Fetterman resigned. But Mr. Shapiro says this will not be necessary as he expects Fetterman to return to active Senate work soon enough.

  208. 208.

    Elizabelle

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Is that supposed to be a jab at me?

    Hi Goku.  Not in the least!  (And good luck with the watch collection.)

    It’s a slap at the WaPost’s horrible new editor, Clickbait Sally Buzbee, and all the newspapers who run scare stories and sensationalize stuff to alarm readers into clicking.

    Buzbee is perhaps auditioning for the FTF NY Times, down the road.  She came out of the AP, so — “Both sides!!”  Her WaPost editors put up headlines that are refuted by the stories themselves.  As in yesterday’s longest story on SVB — people are on edge!

    Silicon Valley Bank failure raises fear of broader financial contagion

    The firm faced unique risks, but rising interest rates and economic uncertainty have many people on edge
    And what are the very first two paragraphs of the WaPost story, by David J. Lynch?:

    Friday’s implosion of Silicon Valley Bank could blow a hole in the most innovative corner of the U.S. economy, interrupt tech workers’ paychecks and push other regional banks into similar distress. But one thing it doesn’t seem likely to do — at least for now — is trigger a wider financial meltdown, banking experts said.
    Unlike the giant banks that ignited a global crisis in 2008, SVB was heavily dependent upon a single risky sector of the economy for both its depositors and its customers. That concentrated bet proved to be very bad news for the ambitious start-ups that dominate the high-technology world. But it means that the tech-friendly bank lacked the sophisticated financial entanglements with other institutions that can turn one bank’s losses into a threat to the entire industry.

    Someone in the WaPost reader comments quoted Doug J. Pitchbot.

  209. 209.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: From The [Philadelphia] Inquirer, February 22:

        Governor Josh Shapiro expects John Fetterman to ‘come back stronger than ever’ after hospitalization for clinical depression.

    Shapiro said he had not received any pressure from establishment Democrats to ask Fetterman to resign. “And if I did, I would dismiss it immediately,” he added.

  212. 212.

    Jesse

    I love these numbers as much as all y’all and love the growth, both as a Dem and as an American who just plain cares about the overall health of the country. The message “the economy sucks” is obviously ridiculous. What’s hard to ignore, though, are the mixed signals being sent. Someone earlier mentioned some yellow flags. And not just inflation. Things are, I would say, net positive, good even, but there’s just multiple weird signals in there, too. Interesting times.

  213. 213.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I see that Marianne Williamson is calling the Left “Godless” now.  Looks like somebody is mad that Black Churches basically laugh at the idea of voting for her.

  215. 215.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Governor Josh Shapiro expects John Fetterman to ‘come back stronger than ever’ after hospitalization for clinical depression.

     
    We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

  216. 216.

    Bill Arnold

    @gene108:

    Trump had enjoyed record low unemployment until 2020, when an overreaction to a respiratory virus caused the global economy to go into free fall.

    Say what? A respiratory virus that killed over 20 million humans (excess deaths estimates are not lies, unlike official Indian and Russian and etc statistics) and left several times that number of survivors with lifelong morbidity? A pandemic that has literally shifted the nature of employment in the US and the balance of power of the employer-employee relationships towards employers? That played a big part in toppling at least a couple of right wing authoritarian governments?
    Please take your revisionism elsewhere, or justify it, with evidence.

  217. 217.

    James E Powell

    @Jesse:

    Things are, I would say, net positive, good even, but there’s just multiple weird signals in there, too. Interesting times.

    People, generally, are so eager to put COVID behind them that they refuse to acknowledge that the impacts last longer than the average American’s attention span or the amount of time the media are willing to stay with a story.

  218. 218.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Years ago, I knew a guy who had been a diplomat in Romania (I think), and he told me that there was basically no functioning currency and the economy ran on unopened cartons of American cigarettes.

    And not just any brand of American cigarettes. Kent.

    (Don’t believe me? Have a look.) One trenchant comment therein:

    For an ordinary [Romanian] citizen to smoke Kent cigarettes would be the equivalent of lighting Cuban cigars in Miami with $100 bills.

    And FWIW, “kent,” as I noted in another thread, is Turkish for “city”.

    In grad school I took Complex Variables from a visiting Turkish math professor named Dr Sinan…er…um…uhh…(wait for it)…Kunt. (Which FTR is a perfectly respectable surname meaning “strong” or “durable” in ancient Turkish.) Interestingly enough, when the following year’s catalogue came out, the professor was still on the faculty, but now listed as Dr. Koont. (I doubt that he actually went through the rigmarole of changing his surname legally, but as said so often and effectively in Airplane!, changing the tense to fit, that wasn’t important at the time… And there was a small Baltimore dairy at the time named Koontz for the owners, which probably smoothed things out for all concerned. Go figger! :^D)​

  219. 219.

    Bill Arnold

    @gene108:

    Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to counteract the Democrat run states that were hell bent on killing the American economy, as they remained in lockdowns far longer than was reasonable.

    This? Fuck off. You are a right wing troll.

  222. 222.

    James E Powell

    @Matt McIrvin:

    and I know people who just habitually vote no on all of them as a protest against the process

    I’m not completely that kind of person, but I am pretty close.

  225. 225.

    Ruckus

    @tobie:

    You’ve never been sick? Sure it’s unlikely you’ve had a stroke and all but still, you’ve never been sick a day in your life?

    I’ve been hospitalized for 2 months.

    I have also personally been hit head on by a truck, and when I say head on, it was my head under the fucking bumper of the truck. (And no the other driver did nothing wrong, I landed on the ground in front of him on an unlit street.) And no, I was 100% sober. It was an accident, caused by a coyote. Who got away unscathed.

    My point is the man has a right to recover without being kicked in nuts by people that have no give, no compassion, no logic in their needs and desires. Be a fucking human being

    And hope to hell that nothing like this ever happens to you.

  226. 226.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    Imagine where we’d be if we didn’t have the electoral college and other structural impediments. 

    Imagine the warnings about bin Laden not being ignored.

  228. 228.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: ​

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: “He had a hat!”

    Oh, goody, and just in time for St Paddy’s:

    Casey wore a brand new hat to Murphy’s late one night,
    Then someone stole it off the rack and started up a fight.
    Casey smashed the radio, the furniture as well,
    And he damn near woke the corpse up when he began to yell:

    (chorus) Oh,
    I had a hat when I came in, I hung it on the rack;
    I’ll have a hat when I go out or I’ll break somebody’s back!
    I’m a peaceful man I am, I am, and I don’t like to shout,
    But I had a hat when I came in; I’ll have a hat when I go out!

    Casey kept on shouting, sure, they tried to keep it quiet,
    Til someone called the station house to come and stop the riot.
    Then two cops walked in through the door and Casey laid them out.
    As he fired them through the window, they all heard Casey shout:

    (chorus)

    Casey kept on fighting until Bigfoot Paddy Flynn
    Conked him in the brisket with a great big fifth of gin.
    It knocked poor Casey senseless – it was an awful clout –
    But as he lay unconscious, he still kept shouting out:

    (chorus)

    From freakin’ memory – learned back in the 80’s in the course of following the Spalpeens, a local Irish ballad band built around Bill Davis, his sons, son-in-law, their friends, and eventually his grandkids. Good memory in both senses of the word (sigh)…

  230. 230.

    El Muneco

    @Baud: Also, Fetterman – a very strong candidate – won 51-46 against an extremely weak candidate.

    Do you really want to bet his seat on a relatively weaker Dem facing a relatively stronger Republican?

  231. 231.

    Geminid

    @El Muneco: Fetterman probably would have been a very strong candidate had it not been for his stroke. That hurt him some in the election.

    I thought McCormick could have given Fetterman a tougher race than Oz did. But thanks to a certain Stable Genius, Oz won the primary (narrowly).

    I’m not sure why you bring up this scenario, though. Since John Fetterman is not up for reelection until 2028, this is a 2027 problem if it’s a problem at all.

  232. 232.

    Ruckus

    @NotMax:

    For 11 yrs I flew around this country most every week over an 8-9 month period every year. I’ve seen a hell of a lot of airports. I’ve slept on the floor of a few of them when planes got canceled. I never had to fly into LGA to see the old one but that is an amazing airport.

  234. 234.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:
    @Dahlia:
    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s a parody.

    Well crafted, long(er) form parody. I am embarrassed. :-) And have new respect for gene108.
    Every other sentence hit a personal, see-red, hot button re the pandemic.

  236. 236.

    The Lodger

    @Uncle Cosmo: The good Dr probably had the same motivation as a former coworker of mine. He and his brothers changed the spelling of their last name from Fuchs to Fewx. Looks a bit unusual, but nobody mispronounces it.

  240. 240.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I told my RWNJ sister that at some point, opposition to “drag” is going to lead to laws forbidding her from wearing pants in public. Nothing but long skirts for her and her 23yo daughter. You know, like Jesus wanted.

  241. 241.

    Geminid

    @Jackie: There were Democrats who sincerely questioned whether John Fetterman was in fact a good candidate, and rooted for one of his primary opponents. I was one of them.

    Pennsylvania Democrats decided otherwise though, and selected Fetterman by a wide margin over two solid alternatives. So I told myself if he’s good enough for them then he’s good enough for me, and adjusted my attitude. I think a few of us did not make that adjustment.

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