Nancy Pelosi’s message at the annual South by Southwest festival could be summarized in three words: Follow the money, writes @JohnGHendy: https://t.co/481axDUzkc
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 18, 2023
House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s message at the annual South by Southwest festival could be summarized in three words: Follow the money.
Pelosi uttered that specific phrase—and similar versions of it—several times during her interview with Evan Smith, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, as part of the magazine’s Future of Democracy summit [last Sunday, March 12th] in Austin, Texas.
… Pelosi pointed out that former President Donald Trump had authorized the reduction of certain Dodd-Frank protections that had been instituted following the 2008 financial crash: “If they were still in place and the bank had to honor them, this might have been avoided,” she offered. Rather than repeating our recent history and using taxpayer money to rescue the failed institution, Pelosi said the focus should be on protecting depositors and small businesses at risk of closing or not making payroll. “We do not want contagion,” she said.
Pelosi pointed to money—the reckless use and exploitation of it—as the root of virtually every problem facing America and the world today. Whether the potential fallout of a failed bank like SVB or the rise of autocracy around the world, it all comes down to money, money, money, and little else. “Money buying Russian oil is paying for the assault on democracy in Ukraine,” Pelosi said. She accused China of “buying” votes from smaller countries at the United Nations, and said the U.S. must join with the European Union “in using the leverage of this big market to have the playing field be more even.”
Pelosi refused to say Trump’s name even once during her one-hour session, referring to the 45th president instead by “What’s his name” under her breath. Still, she condemned the extremism and anarchy that had overtaken American politics since Trump began his rise nearly eight years ago. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, who was struck in the head with a hammer by a home invader last fall, joined her on today’s trip to Texas, which was unusual, given that he’s still recovering from the attack. “I was the target,” she said. “He paid the price.”
She spoke of the January 6 insurrection with sadness and disgust—anarchists “making poo-poo on the floor of the Capitol”—and acknowledged the rioters’ goal to put a bullet in her head that day. Her successor, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, recently gave a trove of January 6 material to Fox News in the name of governmental transparency. Fox’s biggest star, Tucker Carlson, downplayed the severity of the Capitol storming in a broadcast last week. “Something must be wrong with Tucker Carlson,” Pelosi said. “There’s money that runs a lot of it.”…
(Her discussion of ‘global democracy’ starts about the 11min mark)
NEW: Fed alarms over SVB began more than a year ago@sffed tapped a senior team of examiners, which fired off a series of formal warnings to SVB to fix major problems in ops, tech + tracking interest rate risks
Scoop w/ @hannahlevitt + @sridinatshttps://t.co/M8C6wxccwl
— Saleha Mohsin (@SalehaMohsin) March 17, 2023
Serious, constructive discussion of the problems with the pebble that started the avalanche:
Just over a year before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse threatened a generation of technology startups and their backers, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco appointed a more senior team of examiners to assess the firm. They started calling out problem after problem.
As the upgraded crew took over, it fired off a series of formal warnings to the bank’s leaders, pressing them to fix serious weaknesses in operations and technology, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Then late last year they flagged a critical problem: The bank needed to improve how it tracked interest-rate risks, one of the people said, an issue at the heart of its abrupt downfall this month.
The Federal Reserve has promised to investigate how it supervised SVB Financial Group’s Silicon Valley Bank, now the second-biggest failure of a US lender in history. The relatively late discovery of so many flaws raises questions about whether the Fed was diligent in stepping up oversight as the firm was ballooning in size. On Friday, Santa Clara, California-based SVB Financial filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection…
In a twist, the San Francisco Fed’s deputy point person in charge of monitoring the bank until late 2021 received a new assignment afterward, becoming the regulator’s point person on Silvergate Capital Corp., according to people with knowledge of the situation. Silvergate also shut this month because of similar flaws in its deposit base and the positioning of its balance sheet….
SVB was a fraction of its recent size when the Trump administration and congressional Republicans led a bipartisan effort to roll back banking regulations in 2018, ending automatic annual stress testing for banks smaller than $250 billion in assets. The lender’s chief executive officer, Greg Becker, had lobbied for the bill, and as the measure took effect his company’s growth took off. By early last year, it held $220 billion in assets, up from $51 billion at the end of 2017.
That trajectory made SVB the fastest-growing major bank in the nation over the past five years — even outpacing firms such as First Citizens BancShares Inc. and Truist Financial Corp. that completed mergers. By this year, SVB was the country’s 16th largest by assets…
Not as ‘serious & constructive’, but after a week this thread seems like a damned good summary…
this will suck for a lot of workers who didn't have any choice in the matter, and it's not their fault, but far fewer pointless saas companies and delivery app makers who never had realistic business plans to begin with is not a terrible outcome https://t.co/MRl9YrpXEt
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 10, 2023
i do not think it's the worst outcome in the world if founders have to start creating real business plans with real use cases and actual paths to profitability before they get handed millions of dollars to set on fire
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 10, 2023
also, if you're a venture capitalist who put all of your eggs in the SVB basket, man, you're a fucking moron, you have (or, well, you used to have) the money to pay people who would tell you to avoid doing that *at all costs*, it's no one else's fault you didn't listen
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 10, 2023
Baud
If innovation depends on a particular bank, it’s not very innovative.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Pelosi is undoubtedly right. But then, she usually is.
Narya
I worked for a startup at one point—employee #8. I could write a novella about it, but I have no interesting angle. Same shit, different decade.
Princess
Pelosi is right. As usual. And a lot of global problems that we think of as ideological turn out to have a foundation of money. Look at Israel. At bottom, there’s a lot of corrupt money and contracts being handed over to build those West Bank settlements and people want to keep that flowing.
Bugboy
That last GLHM post was *chef’s kiss*. I wonder if Peter Theil agrees?
ETA: Speaker Pelosi is a little too religious for me, but otherwise she’s a fascinating public speaker.
different-church-lady
This is America: it’s always someone else’s fault.
Baud
Seems like rapid growth should be a red flag in the banking industry. Depository institutions are supposed to be the most conservative, financially speaking.
Brachiator
Most stories I have read report that it is not an either/or situation. All depositors will be protected. The issue of payrolls was a timing problem which also has been addressed. And it’s not a taxpayer bailout.
Pelosi makes some good points related to policy and regulation, but is wrong about details of the bank rescue process.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Until a friend went to work for the Fed in Minneapolis I didn’t realize that the Fed had multiple district offices. And I only recently realized it’s not a government agency. I’d feel bad, but I suspect I wasn’t alone in my ignorance
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The Board of Governors is a federal agency. The Fed banks are privately run, but I believe they are “owned” nominally by national banks. It’s complicated.
Rusty
A lot of “tech” out of silicone valley isn’t very techy. It’s either retail, how to make it easier for you to buy the same thing you always bought (the value proposition being shifting risks and costs onto the workers at the bottom), selling advertising (that is much of google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). A reckoning that had investment money flow to actual tech would be an improvement.
As for the money, I’m watching my state NH, along with a bunch of other states working to wreck their public schools. The money pushing this from a handful of extremely wealthy individuals or foundations that are ideologically driven, hostile to the public anything, teachers unions, religiously fundamental, etc. The consequences will to the rest of us. With the current reactionaries on the Supreme Court it’s impossible to see how this gets changed.
Hangö Kex
Little doubt that highly concentrated wealth is the source of much evil. Why not a fair and square head-on attack, say, like a 101% property tax on > $US 1 000 000 000 ?
different-church-lady
@Rusty:
…and now there’s a middle man and it’s more expensive.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: Is it still morning? I must be doing something wrong.
catclub
The customers at SVB were amazingly stupid in their cash management practices. They should come in for increasing blame.
1) They apparently did not have second bank accounts somewhere else. 2) They were earning zero % interest at the start of 2023 on amounts well over $250k per account, when money market funds were paying over 3%! Why?
If those companies were ‘promising’ startups, why were they so stupid with money?
Joey Maloney
Oh, I think it’s much more widespread than that. The real estate market and hi-tech, the much vaunted “startup nation” are both awash in corrupt money, most of it probably Russian. Since the fall of the USSR and the rise of the Russian kleptocracy, the state has been a nexus for laundering mob rubles into nice, clean greenbacks.
The big question now is, how badly is Bibi’s power grab going to fuck that all up. Hi-tech money is fleeing, the shekel’s value is cratering, and pretty much every sector of the society is out on the streets protesting (mostly so far) peacefully. Israel has looked like an island of stability in the region. Not sure that will still be true if “the only democracy in the middle east” turns into “Hungary, but with a funny-looking alphabet”.
Evap
The federal reserve is quasi-government, my brother worked there before he retired. Some of the benefits of gov jobs, like a pension, but not full on fed gov employee
catclub
@Brachiator:
the bailout is to the COUNTERPARTIES of the bankrupt organization. In this case the depositors, in the Lehman case, all of the holders of Lehman’s bonds. It may be true that banks will end up paying for the additional (effectively) FDIC insurance to the depositors. But the giant depositors, who had accounts MUCH larger than the $250k FDIC insured amount, got bailed out. Not SVB bank.
ETA: These counterparties are not little depositors. They SHOULD be pretty sophisticated companies, with competent treasurers.
sab
I think this latest bank failure stuff shows a lot about how we fixed things back then (2008) and also too how good it is to have Tim Guitner in the private sector and not protecting his people while in government.
Shareholders and bankers got screwed and depositors won this time. Big win
ETA I know he was Treasury not Fed. They do work together.
BellyCat
The SVB collapse is what happens when wealthy tech investor bros get older, finding themselves increasingly out of touch and bored with young tech entrepreneurs at parties — especially when the parents of the few hawt girls in attendance are now younger than they are. And being hunted (for money) is less fun than when they were young and doing the hunting. So the tech wealthy, wanting to ride the next big tech wave without paddling to catch it, decided SVB would be “the party” so they could stay home.
Baud
@Hangö Kex: Does any country think that’s a good idea?
Hangö Kex
Everyone, really, should have an account with the run-proof central bank. This may have been impractical earlier, but could be done now.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@catclub: The condition on the VC investment in these companies was that the funds remain in SVB. There were a lot of decent reasons for that that were for the protection of the investors, but the customers were legit constrained from moving them around.
Hangö Kex
@Baud: Apparently not. (A world without billionaires would seem like a better one though?)
BellyCat
@Joey Maloney: Reading the tea leaves, Russian money laundering prefers real estate. Saudi money (no need to launder it to grow it!) prefers Silicon Valley tech.
Sanjeevs
Looks like Credit Suisse is going to be forced to merge with UBS by the Swiss authorities this weekend.
We are back in 2008 again.
Kay
Always wrong. Always. Decades of being promoted and taken seriously in the US based on having an English accent. It’s embarrasing for the country.
Baud
@Hangö Kex: Wealth inequality and the concentration of wealth is a real issue. But $1 billion is an arbitrary number that has no objective meaning other than the human mind’s preference to round large numbers to those that end in zeros.
catclub
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Then it was the VC companies that should have scrutinized, and continued to scrutinize, SVB and its practices a whole lot better than they did. They fucked up and got bailed out.
Baud
@Sanjeevs: There’s little evidence this is anything like 2008.
Geminid
Mr. Tan is full of baloney when he says that wiping out so many tech start ups will set innovation back 10 years. This is like the crash in oil prices at the beginning of the pandemic. That was an “*extinction level event* for a lot of companies operating in the Permian Basin. But the oil was still there and so were the drilling rigs, and now the Permian Basin is producing more oil than ever.
NotMax
Obligatory.
Sanjeevs
@Baud: October 2008 not yet. But March 2008 yes.
Credit Suisse is a globally import bank. Next week will see deposit flight from weak European banks like Unicredit and DB.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@catclub:
I understand the frustration, but the reality is a lot more complicated – a lot of e-commerce that had nothing to do with SVB used pay portals that were operated by entities that paid employees and vendors through SVB – it was a genuinely systemic hazard.
Had the Fed not had this myopic focus on inflation and hiking rates, there never would have been a problem.
Baud
@Sanjeevs: Ok, I guess we’ll see if we have a stock market crash and mass unemployment in a few months (assuming that the House GOP doesn’t trigger something with the debt limit).
H.E.Wolf
@Narya:
Comrade! Employee #106 here, started in the stockroom; and delighted to be a real chip off the old block, since my dad had worked as a second-shift foreman in *his* Manufacturing days.
SSDD galore, and lots of novella material, including sexism, cronyism, miscellaneous management fads-of-the-moment, and a (justified) SEC investigation for booking fake orders.
That last was no surprise to those of us in Manufacturing, who’d heard from the guys in Receiving a year earlier about the suite of ostrich-skin office furniture purchased by the new VP of Sales. When people tell you who they are, believe them. :)
Hangö Kex
@Baud: Sure, but a (progressive) wealth tax still seems like a obvious remedy.
Baud
@Hangö Kex: I don’t think anything is obvious. And the devil is in the details. There are a million ways to implement any progressive wealth tax.
Kristine
@H.E.Wolf: @Narya: Another start-up survivor here. Did you know GMP* is just an acronym that doesn’t mean anything?
*Good Manufacturing Practice
Hangö Kex
@Baud: Yeah, the principle may be obvious, but the practice not so much; assessing wealth for tax purposes is difficult (especially when the object of such an assessment has a reason to make it so).
frosty
@different-church-lady: Speaking of difficult: My latest attempt to check prices on Amazon was for a Patagonia fleece pullover. I typed Patagonia into the search bar and they returned “sponsored” and “recommended” items, then others at the bottom. Not one was from Patagonia. Their search engine baffles me.
Stacib
@Kristine: I work in pharma. GMP / cGMP is the life blood. My company fired an entire department of 36 people because of a couple folks being out of compliance and nobody bringing it to HR or the anonymous call in number. Training is twice per year with one being “in the classroom”. Tell those guys it’s just an acronym, and you may have to run for cover.😉
Kristine
@frosty: Those folks are paying for the privilege of bumping your search choice to the bottom of the list. IOW, it’s not a mistake. At least, not totally.
Baud
@frosty: Amazon’s search engine is dreadful.
WaterGirl
Does anyone know why this is suddenly in the news? I feel like we have known this on BJ since forever.
Geminid
@Hangö Kex: My Atlanta friend tells me that a constitutional amendment would be required for a wealth tax, comparable to the amendment authorizing our income tax. I could not repeat his technical argument, and he’s not a constitutional law expert in general. But he learned a lot about taxation and its constitutional basis in his law practice and was pretty certain of this point. I do not think this was a matter of ideology on my friend’s part; Warren is basically a democratic socialist in political and economic outlook.
Eunicecycle
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: yes the Fed has a big share of the blame in this. Kept interest rates at zero for too long because that’s what Trump wanted. Then raised them too fast and too high when Biden came in. That made SVB’s bond holdings worth less. Plus a lot of “inflation” is gouging and supply chain issues, which won’t be fixed by higher interest rates.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: It’s because this guy started talking. The idea that this happened has been around forever but it often got dismissed as a conspiracy theory motivated by nothing more than “cui bono?”
Kristine
@Stacib:
This was a pharma start-up. The guy who started it–let’s just say he had some outdated notions coupled with C-suite attitude and move on. And he was getting his funding from folks outside pharma. Pretty sure that was on purpose–fewer questions.
I left there for a job in Big Pharma–was there for 26 years. So yup, what you said. And yet some companies still get caught cutting corners.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
@Matt McIrvin:
I asked once about the evidence for this, and apparently it is not as provable as Nixon’s actions to prolong the Vietnam War in 1968. So I welcome new information and scrutiny.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I knew in general that Reagan’s team let Iran know that it would be rewarded for jamming Carter on releasing the hostages. I don’t think I’ve heard of this “clandestine trip” before, though. I can see why it was kept quiet for over four decades.
trnc
If the SF Fed started warning SVB a year ago and SVB was not taking those warnings seriously, were there regs that the Fed should have used, but did not, to bring them in line?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: I recently ran an Amazon ad for my only self-published book (ie, the only one I have control over). It was pay-per-click, meaning I was only charged if someone clicked on the ad. I could choose to pay more or less, depending on where Amazon placed the ad (above the fold, during an active time of day, etc). Someone is always paying.
Hangö Kex
@Geminid:
I’d expect constitutional arguments against a wealth tax (not so sure about their merit, the govt has a right to levy taxes, after all); it seems the right thing to do though. At any rate, I’m glad this hasn’t been dismissed as just commie-crazy-talk here though. :)
Baud
@trnc:
Good question. I’m not sure what tools the feds have if a bank decides to engage in risky behavior against the Fed’s advice. Perhaps cancelling deposit insurance, but that’s a pretty nuclear option.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed. But our media betters are salivating at the thought that it might be.
trnc
Was there a reason besides inflation to raise interest rates? If not, I don’t see which month would have made sense to raise rates before 2021.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
NotMax
@Baud
So old can remember when the only tech banks dabbled in involved handing out a free toaster when opening an account.
:)
Kay
@WaterGirl:
Because one of them is ashamed and facing his own mortality and he confessed. Whatever people “knew” on BJ – and I agree, millions of Americans knew it was a set up- the official media/DC story was denial. For decades.
It’s alos relevant in the sense that it’s a reminder that the Republican Party and conservatives, generally, have harmed this country over and over in pursuit of power and ideological dominance. They have to be checked, and checked hard, over and over because they lack character and cannot self police. They have to be tightly regulated because they cannot or will not regulate their own behavior. I’ve always suspected it goes back to how they are raised.
narya
@H.E.Wolf: Ohhhhh, how about nepotism? When I saw the salaries that the c-suite folks were paying themselves, I about lost my shit. Like, you’re supposed to get the big money after you are successful, not after you get a little VC money. But being a son helps, apparently.
@Kristine: @Stacib: We were pharma-adjacent, and the aforementioned founders seemed to think they could bullshit pharma folks. Nope. When they are asking pointed questions about your data, you can’t hand-wave them away, or act like you’re the expert and they’re not. I mean, you can try, but I won’t bet on the success of that effort, based on what I saw.
trnc
Not only that, but I don’t think there’s anything in the constitution indicating a limit of any kind. Compare and contrast to the 2nd amendment, for which there are limitations placed within the amendment and elswhere.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
It is a good reminder too, that whenever people get all misty eyed about “chamber of commerce” Republicans they are ignoring that Republicans engineered a situation where US hostages were held and perpetrated a fraud on the entire country. Why? Because they wanted to cut their own taxes and abolish labor unions.
Geminid
@Hangö Kex: I could not judge the validity of the constitutional argument against a wealth tax. I know the Congress and the states did pass an amendment to enable the income tax, but I cannot say if they had to pass it, or would have to pass another one to enable a wealth tax.
I have noticed that Senator Warren does not seem to talk up a wealth tax like she used to. Maybe I’m just not paying enough attention.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Maybe came up while reporters were researching and reassessing Jimmy Carter’s presidency, in light of his entry into hospice.
Incidentally, each morning and several times each day, I think of JEC and am thankful that he is still with us, and was president. Very decent man. Wish him a peaceful passing, but not before he is ready!
(Does anyone else remember Art Buchwald, WaPost humor columnist, who got kicked out of hospice because he kept surviving?)
Hangö Kex
@trnc:
Quite.
Jeffro
There’s a lot more than just money that’s wrong with Tucker Carlson.
WaterGirl
@Baud: @Geminid:
Thank you both. Has there been a Republican president in the last 50 years that was not corrupt? Who did not put party of country?
trnc
I’m not sure that cancelling deposit insurance would accomplish anything, but I think sticking to it strictly could. All a company has to do is spread deposits around to stay within the insured limit of one account per institution.
In fact, I wonder if it’s time for a tiered system where banks can have a higher deposit insurance limit but also have to pay more into the FDIC fund to cover it.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: From the NYT story:
Barnes was the official who pulled strings to make sure Bush Jr. got in the TX Air National Guard to avoid being drafted. Small world!
And you’re right — modern Republicans have been power-hungry people of low character for all of our lives. The Trump circus made it that much more obvious, but that such an absurd charlatan was able to kick over their “respectable” party institution is an indicator of how shitty it always was.
Timill
@Geminid: Basically, it’s these bits of the Constitution:
Article I
Section 2: The House of Representatives
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Section 8: Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Section 9: Powers Denied Congress
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
16th Amendment
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
So the Feds can raise taxes per head of population on the States, and the 16th Amendment makes income-derived taxes legal.
Disclaimer: I’m a mathematician not a lawyer, but it’s all logic puzzles here…
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: Most of there mainstream media is made up of shallow ghouls who care primarily care about cicks and ratings – without the guiding principles of their journalism, with no sense of right and wrong, or at least no care or concern about the consequences of wrong.
WaterGirl
@Kay: I agree with everything you wrote.
WaterGirl
@Kay: All I can say, then, is that it’s about fucking time this came out. At least one person has a conscience, nearly 50 years too late, but better late than never.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: Barnes says he started telling his story because he heard Jimmy Carter was dying and it brought back his feelings of guilt over being involved.
Alison Rose
You know, as tough as she is, it must have hit her so hard emotionally to know not just that her husband was brutally attacked, but that the person did it because he was trying to get to her. What a horrible double whammy to cope with.
trnc
@Timill: Thanks for laying that out. I rescind my earlier statement about no limits on taxes in the constitution. Can’t believe in particular I forgot that the federal income tax required an amendment.
Hangö Kex
@WaterGirl: *nods* (funny thing, apparently I cannot end with an asterix?)
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Canceling deposit insurance on even one bank would cause an immediate run on every bank in the country and screw all the depositors, who are presumably the people you are trying to protect by regulating banks.
Fleeting Expletive
@WaterGirl: Patti Reagan Davis talked about the Reagan people slow-walking the actual swearing-in until they got word that the hostages’ rescue plane had lifted off the runway. Contemporaneously. She may have denied it later but that was her observation as a member of the family as they waited on the stage. I was old enough to get the audaciousness of usurping the honor that should have accrued to Carter.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
I won’t be around to see it but expect a veritable tsunami of effluent to come out 40 or so years after the Dolt 45 debacle.
“…all of a sudden it’s closer to the end than the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features.”
– Network
artem1s
@Brachiator:
I read ‘recent history’ as referring to the W 2008 bank collapse not this one that happened (historically speaking) yesterday. Nancy has always had a long view of history. She has actual experience and memories of things that happened more than a quarter ago.
Gvg
@frosty: Patagonia may not sell on Amazon. I find that when I can’t find the actual vendor I want only substitutes (offer very silly ones) that the mainstream company I want isn’t actually using Amazon, at least not right then, or not directly.
At best you may get competitors.
Try the company itself, google and cough, ebay. Possibly any retail store you know that carries it. Does it have a factory outlet?
frosty
@Gvg: REI has it. A week ago it was discounted 50% because it was discontinued. Now it’s full price, so I guess it wasn’t discontinued. I was trying to verify one or the other. eBay has it, along with used ones at around half price. So now I’m in shopping quandary again, like usual. Or as Ms F says “You should have jumped on it when you saw it was half price.”
Another Scott
@frosty: Amazon’s search is broken by design. They want you to buy what they decide, not what you are looking for.
It’s often better to do a Google search – “amazon.com Patagonia pullover” (without the quotes).
CamelCamelCamel.com is good for checking Amazon prices over time.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Spanky
@frosty: Try REI
ETA: Oops. Too late.
artem1s
@Rusty:
Amazon is essentially an online Sears & Roebuck catalog. Faceplant, twitter et al have replaced the personals and classified in papers and magazines. The only difference is the ads aren’t in the back of magazine where we can ignore them – they have, in some platforms, completely replaced the actual content. There’s nothing ‘techy’ about them except to a bunch of olds at the turn of the last century who thought the intertubes would never catch on.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Interesting. Thank you. Will give the article a skim later.
Hangö Kex
Oh well, I’ll have to pop out for a bit, but while I’m away, I’d appreciate if you did implement a progressive wealth tax and give everyone an account at the central bank (which would wonderfully screw the current monopolists to the benefit of the common man/woman :).
Gvg
@frosty: Patagonia may not sell on Amazon. I find that when I can’t find the actual vendor I want only substitutes (offer very silly ones) that the mainstream company I want isn’t actually using Amazon, at least not right then, or not directly.
At best you may get competitors.
Try the company itself, google and cough, ebay. Possibly any retail store you know that carries it. Does it have a factory outlet?
@Baud: No. it’s getting less good, but compared to a lot of them it is fairly good. I mean, do you remember sears so called search engine? The company that practically created mail order in this country, that historically you could order an actual HOUSE from, never really even tried to get its act together for online. Pathetic. Most of them are. eBay is pretty good, IMO, with sort options that are useful.
Why allow purchase of product placements up top that don’t match when it’s a commercial site and everyone is looking to buy specific things? Give them what they are looking for so they can spend money instead of frustrating them into giving up because they think what they want isn’t there.
Also quit showing me adds for stuff I already bought 2 or 3 years ago for someone else who is now older and has different tastes. Kids change a lot. Things purchased for kids do not imply I still need the same things years later. Or really, once I bought the expensive thing on that site, I don’t care about ads for it.
H.E.Wolf
[ETA: removed 1st paragraph because I didn’t know what I was talking about.]
The USA does have a Federal Reserve Bank system, which is often referred to as a “central bank” [sic]… but they don’t, to my knowledge, offer checking accounts. :)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/whatwedo
oatler
Enjoying Elizabeth Warren clobber a CBS Jurnalist trying to nail the administration for SVB. The jurnalist then soothed herself by “sparring” with a GOP from NC.
Sure Lurkalot
@H.E.Wolf:
Dean Baker is an advocate of giving a Federal Reserve account to everyone:
https://cepr.net/the-answer-to-the-silicon-valley-bank-bailout-federal-reserve-banking/
WRT a wealth tax and its implementation hurdles, it is to laugh, considering what the billionaires get away with in sheltering their obscene wealth. It may be just a bunch of zeros, but there are few in that club that don’t game the system.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
CaseyL
@frosty: Use eBay. Patagonia is all over the place there.
I use eBay as my primary online marketplace, actually. There are probably downsides, but so far I’m not aware of any.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Instructive to look back and see what conservatives saw as such a threat that they had to perpetrate an elaborate fraud and lie to the whole country for decades.
Jimmy Carter. A moderate, religious Christian southerner. A former governor and veteran. That’s the “threat” they were shrieking about and lying about and committing treason to beat- that guy.
No one should take them seriously. They’re ninnies. They’ve been pulling the fire alarm over non-threats for my entire adult life. They’re not grown ups.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Andrew Sullivan is the perfect example of this. Just since the 1990’s Andrew Sullivan has absolutely freaked out 7 or 8 times and it’s always over some imagined threat. He’s a hysteric. Entirely fear-driven person. He should be ignored.
This time it’s “wokeness”. A couple of years ago it was “health care”. Right before that it was terrorism.
kindness
Who remembers back in 2018 when ‘progressive’ Democrats said Nancy was too old and would be a terrible House Speaker. They said we needed a younger person for the post.
Sometimes, it’s our own side that wounds our cause most grievously. I don’t know that any of those ‘progressives’ ever apologized for their statements, but at least they shut their mouths when Nancy showed them how good she really is.
CaseyL
@Kay:
But the GOP wasn’t only interested in preventing a Carter re-election. They were about a very long-term goal: wrecking the entire structure of post-WWII America (and possibly post-Civil War America).
Starting with re-establishing a government of the money, for the money.
Reagan took a sledgehammer to the national finances. It wasn’t only the steep decreases in taxes on the rich: it was also the way he (and Congress) “made up for it” by ending entire categories of public programs and raising taxes on the middle class.
(F’rex: People used to be able to deduct their credit card interest payments on their 1040s – separately from their itemized deductions; it was its own line item. You could claim more charitable donations. A lot of little things we don’t even think about anymore.)
They’re very nearly there. One more GOP Presidency and we’re irrevocably broken.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
I have never understood the appeal that Sullivan has/had to the left of center. He’s always been a Thatcherite and a misogynist (oddly enough, he proves that one can be both at once) who, as you note, overreacts to everything.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
@catclub:
Agreed, but also worth noting that most VCs required the start-ups that they funded to use SVB as a condition of getting funding.
Doesn’t excuse larger companies like Roku.
Jackie
@Geminid: There was a documentary a year or so ago chronicling Nixon’s political history and it was covered pretty extensively. That, coupled with watching Nixon’s inauguration in ‘81 and the news showing Iran releasing the hostages immediately after…
I’m not sure why it’s “new” news today, either – other than Carter’s in hospice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jackie: Nixon?
StringOnAStick
@Sister Golden Bear: VC’s requiring start-ups to use SVB just looks like more Silicon Valley bro culture, keeping it all with “our kind”.
I suspected that so much of the Fed’s interest rate hikes were to hurt the economy so the D’s would lose massively in 2022, but good old Keynsian stimulus measures proved too robust for their plans; yet another reason R’s hate Keynes. As for SVB, the Fed was very clear they were going to keep raising rates and the criteria they were using. Not getting their bond balance right is on SVB’s management.
CaseyL
@Omnes Omnibus:
Jackie may have confused Nixon sabotaging the US-Vietnam peace talks in 1968 with Reagan sabotaging the hostage release talks in 1980.
Two inflection points in US political history, both accomplished by traitorous sabotage.
Mai Naem mobile
@catclub: yes they were stupid but I also read somewhere that the VCs insisted on having the start upside money at SVB. I also read somewhere that SVB gave a lot of sweetheart loans etc to VC folks who would not necessarily qualify for the loans they were getting. Then, there’s the stories of how this crap started on VC chat groups which leads me to wonder if it was done intentionally to short the bank to make $$$. Chances are it will be years before the SEC completes an investigation if they do it. By that point everybody’s forgotten about this and the perpetrator either gets off completely or gets off with a slap on the wrist.
narya
@CaseyL: Part of why I decided to pay off the mortgage WAAAAAYYYY early, despite a <3% interest rate, is that I could no longer deduct the mortgage interest.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin:
A friend of mine is a regulator with the FDIC. The FDIC usually tries to make depositors whole — even for uninsured amounts — to head off future bank runs. (What killed SVB was precisely a bank run driven by the fears depositors would lose their uninsured deposits.)
It sucks that risky behavior has minimal consequences, but there’s a logic behind why the FDIC does this.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think there’s a kind of eagerness among centrist Democrats to be accepted by conservatives. I see it where I live, where Democrats are a political minority and most of them are centrists.
I saw it when Sullivan indicated he would support Obama – a lot of Democrats pointed to that as evidence of Obama’s value. It’s as if they need the approval of the Right. I joke about it here, in county Democratic politics, how our Democrats are begging: “please like us!” :)
I finally got them to stop endorsing “Independents” who would get elected, immediately become Republicans and never speak to us again. I want them to think of themselves as more valuable than that.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t think there’s anything comparable on the Right. There are no Republicans who seek the approval of Democrats or validation BY Democrats. It makes me sad when Democrats do it. The groveling is kind of gross.
Mai Naem mobile
@CaseyL: i had a client who was a small home builder who was a Republican until Reagan. He said Reagan destroyed small home builders through tax code changes. I don’t know what the Dems can actually do about it but I really think anti trust is an issue they should at least start talking about. Widespread industry consolidation is killing competition, raising costs for consumers and lowering pay for employees and many many people realize that.
Baud
@Kay:
I agree. But the reason is that Republicans are dominant in white society, and for a lot of people, that’s still the only society that matters.
Geminid
@H.E.Wolf: This talk of the Federal Reserve jarred loose a couple old memories. One was of seeing a large oil painting in an old Staunton, Virginia bank showing Woodrow Wilson signing the Federal Reserve Act.
The other memory was of Joe L___, a friend from the 1970s, talking about a secret meeting on Jekyll Island where established financial interests took control of the U.S. economic system. Joe was an eccentric techie who did freelance work in telecommunications, and at the time I was sceptical of a lot of his ideas.
So I looked up the topic just now and ran into an article by a history adjunct to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (federalreservehistory.org). It had the picture: “President Wilson Signing the Federal Reserve Act,” painted by William G. Kurtz in 1923, photo “courtesy of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library” (a Staunton institution).
The article also had Joe L___’s Jekyll Island story:
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: What Republicans have is not an eagerness to be accepted by Democrats, but an insistence that they’re owed respect by the whole culture, by intellectuals, by the media and institutions. If they don’t have it, it must be a dirty trick. They also like to imagine that we’re secretly praising them in the hipster coffee shops, etc.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That doesn’t take much imagination. It’s less prevalent now, but “why can’t Dems be tough like Republicans” has been a recurring theme in political conversations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
No one ever says things like that here.
Geminid
@Jackie:I’m guessing you meant Reagan, not Nixon. I do these things often myself.
I think the reason this story is making news now is because of Mr. Barnes’ personal account of his participation in the events of 1980. That is a new part of this old story.
frosty
@CaseyL:
I’ve been on eBay since 1996 both buying and selling when they had only sold about a million items. Infrequent, but good deals and reliable.
oatler
@Mai Naem mobile:
“Reagan destroyed small home builders through tax code changes.”
That detail is not present in John Hughes movies. He created Generation X fantasy-land.
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL:
There is a 100% chance there will be one more Republican Presidency at some point–if not in 2025 then in 2029 or later–so if that’s the trigger we can give up on trying to save this country now.
James E Powell
@Kay:
And neuter the EPA which was just getting started.
Jackie
@Omnes Omnibus: Ooops meant Reagan 🤦🏼♀️
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: Praise, manifestly desired, as long as it’s slavish. Respect, why certainly; it’s their due. But most of all they want and hope for fear.
James E Powell
@frosty:
I’m a TNF guy, but my sister & her husband are Patagonia forever. They use the company website.
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: Conservatives, generally speaking, do not make a distinction between respect and fear.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin:
Very good point.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell:
Is this the up-market outerwear version of Ford vs Chevy?
Omnes Omnibus
@oatler:
It wasn’t really an issue in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago.
Chris T.
@CaseyL:
“One dollar, one vote!”
Chris T.
@StringOnAStick:
That’s not the nominal goal, but there is an awfully convenient lineup that happens, given the actual goal. The actual goal is “price stability compatible with full employment” (see the Dual Mandate description on the St Louis Fed site).
There are some very large problems, some of them purely theoretical and some of them entirely practical, that get in the way of this “dual mandate”, mainly: What exactly does “stable price” mean, and what exactly is “full employment”? Again, follow the link above and read for background material.
J R in WV
@Geminid:
So surely you mean November 1910?1
Chief Oshkosh
@Geminid: Part of what SHOULD be making this a newsworthy item is that, as far as I know, this is the first time anyone in the government (at the time) is stating that this actually, really happened and that A LOT of people in the government were involved.
This is NEWS because prior to this, the episode was treated as rumor and myth, if it was mentioned at all.
And every Democrat should be screaming about this on the news and in press releases. And yet…crickets.
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: This story just came out, and it’s Sunday. And a lot of Democrat-aligned people are already hollering about this story. You can see some of them in the post at the top of this thread.