Betsy Stauffer: Thinks Bankers’ FRAUDS… Are The Fault Of A Federal Government.

Well… this is precious.

Everything that went “right” during Tangerine’s “profligate” spending sprees (her term of art, that), as well as tax cuts for the billionaires… was due to sound policy and wise thinking — according to Betsy.

But here, three years later in Ms. Stauffer’s telling — everything that goes wrong (and primarily in the case of Signature Bank at least, the allegation that top executives turned a willfully-blind eye to Sam Bankman Fried’s multi-billion dollar crypto- frauds)… is the fault of that same supposedly profligate spending by a Democratic administration.

That would be enough to damn her remarks as not worthy of a serious person.

But there is much more here: while openly admitting that it would be “at best” gross negligence not to “maturity match” assets (loans) with liabilities (deposit obligations), on the part of SVB (which is exactly what happened!)… she still says it is somehow the Fed’s fault for raising rates, in the first place.

Except that rate management has been the core Fed responsibility for nearly 75 years now. And for at least 55 of those years, bankers have had a whole tool-belt of financial instruments and derivatives specifically to manage rate risks. But those tools cost real cash — and so, they slightly dampen expected profits. It is painfully obvious that these jokers actively eschewed them — seeking endlessly skyward bank profits. [And that’s assuming there was no… fraud — something we do not yet know.] Not clear how that is the government’s fault. [Or if it is, it was primarily under Tangerine, as he signed into law several roll-backs on the Dodd-Frank reforms from the last (2008) bank crisis — by 2019.]

Thus, she (of all people, claiming to be a finance sophisticate) looks just… foolish, in torturing these facts to force a false narrative that somehow blames the Biden Administration for the fact that more than a few crypto-bros and their bankers are straight up fraudsters.