Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal wrote one of his best columns. And the title of it: Silicon Valley Bank and Joe Biden’s $19 Trillion Money. And what Mr. Jenkins points out are things that really need to be pointed out about what Biden did and what the ramifications are and then whether or not what Biden did solved the underlying first mover problem.
Which it did not. I’ll give a little advanced warning that it didn’t solve the underlying problem. And he identifies the underlying problem. He goes on to say, and I will give some quotes here from the article, “If Monday’s routes and bank stocks further spooked uninsured depositors, it was just one more way government was working against itself.”
“Shareholders had a reason for fright as the government suddenly, and unilaterally rewrote the terms of their investment. In essence, out of the blue, the risks that large sophisticated, uninsured depositors had willingly accepted were shifted to bank shareholders and US taxpayers so Biden could have a pleasanter start to his week, and otherwise would’ve been the case.”
He says it goes on. Don’t buy the claim that bank shareholders and CEOs have been taught a lesson. He says the government doesn’t actually eliminate failure. It transfers the risk to itself with enough risk transference, government’s own solvency, and ability to maintain the value of its currency are placed at risk.
We aren’t there yet, but hard to miss are the whispers that the Fed should now back off the inflation fight to support the administration’s priority to avoid more political noise in bank failures. Here’s the key paragraph. When he gets into what the underlying problem is that is causing all of the distress across our economy.
The biggest problem of all is the size, inefficiency, indebtedness, and unsustainability of government. This is why I said earlier this week, the key is the governments of incredibly high government spending and incredibly high overreach by the bureaucracies of our country. Our political class has a silent strategy here too.
Hope it blows up on somebody else’s watch. Now that’s a key one. Hope it blows up on somebody else’s watch. If the politicians like Barney Frank who passed the Dodd-Frank Bill, then retired, oversaw them, and was responsible for the 2008 and 2009 mess. Then he goes on the board of Signature Bank in New York and watches it proceed to have a whole bunch of terrible woke policies.
He collected hundreds of thousands of dollars as a bank board of directors as a bank board member. The question is whether or not he’s gonna be sued, which he ought to be because he didn’t do his job. There are fiduciary responsibilities to being a board member, especially of a bank. Already written into law are set 25 percent cuts in social security benefits.
Medicare can always balance its books. Listen to this. Medicare can always balance its books by cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals and letting declining service and wait lists drive patients to seek care elsewhere. That’s what’s happened in Canada, by the way.
That’s what’s happening in Great Britain as we speak. Those are exactly the things that are going on, and anyone who does not understand that our biggest problem facing this country is the vast overreach of our federal government is simply wrong. It’s just that simple.
And unfortunately, saving Silicone Valley Bank and the depositors in the method that they’ve done it, kicks the can down the road. The question is, does it kick the can down the road a couple of hundred yards, in which case it’s gonna rear its ugly head fairly soon, or does it kick the can down a mile or so, which pushes it out? Maybe two or three or four years.
We will see. But, Kevin McCarthy has a chance with the Republicans on the debt ceiling increase to force the Biden administration to do the right thing and to cut government spending by at least half a trillion dollars which shouldn’t be that difficult because Biden’s increased government spending by at least one and a half trillion dollars. So in two years, it shouldn’t be very difficult to get him to give up a third of his increases. But we’ll see.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by The Free Birds.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed openthebooks.com Founder Adam Andrzejewski to the newsmaker line to unravel Silicon Valley Bank’s ties to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Leahy: To the issue of honesty, cover-up. Silicon Valley Bank, all the roads are leading to Governor Gavin Newsom. Adam, thanks for joining us.
Andrzejewski: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate coming back on the program.
Leahy: Crom and I were here talking; there’s a lack of honesty and integrity. I think in your latest column at Openthebooks substack, you’re pointing out that there’s a coverup about Governor Gavin Newsom’s involvement with the Silicon Valley Bank. Which as everybody knows, failed spectacularly. Adam, tell us more about that.
Andrzejewski: So incredibly Silicon Valley Bank through their investment banking arm bought stakes in three of Governor Gavin Newsom’s private businesses. That was broken by The Intercept.
Here’s what we broke at openthebooks.com. We put the other half of the story together that the president of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment banking arm, his name is John China.
Leahy: Whoa, whoa. No.
Carmichael: Are you making that up?
Leahy: Are you making that up?
Andrzejewski: I’m not. I’m not making it up. His name is John China. It is.
Carmichael: At least you didn’t say his name was Hunter China. (Laughter)
Andrzejewski: There is a real question. Is the Chinese influence being funded out of that investment banking arm as well? But no, his name is actually John China, and he’s a good friend of the Newsom’s. He’s right in the mix of Newsom Inc., as we call it, at openthebooks.com. We found that he is a founding board member of Newsom’s nonprofit, the California Partners Project.
What is the California Partners Project? It’s a nonprofit expressly created to push the public policy agenda of Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She calls herself the first partner. The first thing Governor Gavin Newsom did when he was inaugurated was he established this public office for his wife.
A subdivision of the office of governor, it’s called the office of the first partner. It’s got nine staffers and a million-dollar-a-year appropriation of taxpayer money. Five million dollars since 2019 has gone into this office, but it wasn’t enough. They established this nonprofit to bring in more funding, more staff, and more political lobbying muscle behind his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s public policy agenda.
The first thing they passed incredibly was gender quotas on corporate boards, and they were patting themselves on the back with Silicon Valley Bank’s John China, the Newsom’s, when they passed, signed this into law, but even a California court threw it out because obviously, it was discriminatory. Judicial Watch sued them and got that law thrown out.
Carmichael: I’m really interested in this thing where you’re saying the Silicone Valley Bank in their private investment arm invested. When they collapsed, did they still own interests in three of Newsom’s companies?
Andrzejewski: Yes. They disclosed it on their website. And this begs a lot of questions. We know what the questions are, right? They’ve got the regulators, now that the bank has failed, they’ve got to open the books on the good friend of the Newsom’s, the head of the $5.5 billion investment pool of money that bought stakes in three of his businesses.
Did they overpay for the governor’s business? Was he able to pull chips off the table, pull money out of, take money and risk off the table for himself personally, because of the deep relationship with the head of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment business? We don’t know the answers to that, but we need that transparency.
Carmichael: So you’re saying the Silicon Valley bank had a $5.5 billion private investment organization or entity within their holding company or within their bank that took $5.5 billion and made direct investments in private companies, three of which were in entities where Newsom was a material shareholder. Do we know the names of those three companies and the amount of the investments?
Andrzejewski: We don’t know the amounts. That’s not disclosed, but we do know the names. There are three wineries, I forget the third one, but the second one is Plump Jack. Two of the wineries are pretty well-known brands and so we don’t know the amounts, but certainly, all of this needs sunshine on it.
Leahy: If you look at this, will the equity interests of the Silicon Valley Bank and these three businesses owned by the governor of California be liquidated?
Carmichael: And then the question is whether or not they’ll be liquidated at a preferential rate if these wineries are doing well. (Andrzejewski laughs) If the voters get angry…
Andrzejewski: It will really open a can of worms. What if Newsom buys back the interest from Silicon Bank in his own business at a discounted rate than what they purchased it for? It gets really interesting very quickly.
Carmichael: John Steinbeck wrote a book for if the voters get mad about these winery deals The Grapes of Wrath. (Laughter)
Leahy: Boom, chakalaka.
Carmichael: This is very interesting, especially if those numbers. If it’s a couple hundred thousand dollars each, it’s not that big a deal. But if it’s five or $10 million that’s real money.
Leahy: By the way. Adam, can you find out how much was spent, and how much was invested by Silicon Valley Bank in those three businesses owned by Gavin Newsom?
Andrzejewski: They’re private transactions, but now that the Fed has taken over the bank, look, we need to know. I think there needs to be transparency on this, and the regulators and law enforcement need to start asking the proper questions because here’s what we do know.
The governor himself solicited, he requested a six-figure $100,000 gift for his nonprofit from John China through Silicon Valley Bank, and they paid it. They gave $100,000. It was so close to Newsom that under California ethics law, they had to post that $100,000 gift as behested, as a requested gift on a state ethics website.
That money should be paid back to the bank from Newsom’s nonprofit. And we’re issuing the clarion call that they paid $100,000 back. This was given in 2021, so not that long ago. The depositors, the investors, and now the taxpayers, deserve to have that six-figure gift back in the bank.
Leahy: Absolutely. Adam, a great reporting on your part. Hey, can you come back and tell us what the resolution of this is going to be?
Andrzejewski: Absolutely. I look forward to it.
Leahy: It’s a lot of money and this needs to be transparent, Adam, with Openthebooks.com. Thanks so much for joining us. Come back again if you would please.
Andrzejewski: Thank you so much for having me.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Adam Andrzejewski” by Adam Andrzejewski. Background Photo “Silicon Valley Bank” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
I’ve been digging into what went on with SVB and also the related issues and trying to see what the ramifications are of all this. First of all, 85 to 90 percent of the deposits were above $250,000. In fact, there were 65,000 accounts. The average balance was $3 million. So when Biden says I’m bailing out small businesses, he’s being dishonest again.
He was bailing out Silicon Valley. He was bailing the VC’s out there, and he was bailing out some very big companies . . .The risk management position [at SVP was left open for a year] … how could the Fed have let that position go empty?
It’s not how, it’s, why. And that’s because Silicon Valley Bank was incredibly well connected politically, and we know that because Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors who are billionaires are not gonna take a penny loss. And Biden’s lying about it. And the same thing’s true with Signature Bank.
These are two very woke banks, two very well-connected banks politically; the depositors are not gonna take a penny loss. The directors of those banks ought to be sued and they ought to lose a lot of money. The executives ought to be sued and lose a lot of money. Barney Frank ought to go broke because he was the director of Signature Bank, and he’s the one that wrote the Dodd-Frank bill, he wasn’t doing his job.
And he got paid a lot of money as a director of Signature Bank. Now let’s look at where the other cracks are. You can Google hotels that are going into default, and you’ll see lots of hotels now and that will continue over the next 24 to 36 months.
You’ll see office building rates going into default. You can Google that, and you’ll see lots of that. And then when you look at the question of all of these government bonds that were out there at one percent, one and a half percent, and we said that Silicon Valley banks should have sold those bonds. Who would they have sold them to?
Who would be left hanging, holding the bag? See, that’s the great question. There are bonds out there, trillions of dollars of bonds out there right now that are still carrying those low-interest rates. Who exactly is holding those? Now, what the Fed has done and the FDIC has done is they said, oh, we’re going to change the rules. And now, if you’re holding a billion dollars of bonds that are a hundred million dollars underwater, guess what? You can borrow against the whole billion.
So they’ve changed the rules literally overnight to say you don’t have to mark your bonds to market. I don’t know exactly what that means. There are mortgages out there. A lot of mortgages out there that are three and a quarter percent. Those mortgages aren’t worth the value that they were when the mortgages were put on. I’m not talking about the value of the house, I’m talking about the value of the security because now mortgages are six and a half percent.
And so, who is holding those? And so what I’m saying is, we’re only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg. If the Biden administration continues through the Fed to raise interest rates, they will only dig the hole deeper. But if they don’t raise interest rates, then inflation will go up.
The problem is there is one solution that is needed right now, and that is a dramatic cut in federal spending. That’s the one that Biden refuses. He says he won a penny. So we’re in a very interesting and perhaps difficult situation.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Silicon Valley Bank” by Coolcaesar. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss reactions to Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally’s recent social media snafu and his removal from office.
Leahy: In studio, the original all-star panelist. Crom, The Tennessee Star, we’ve been in business now for over six years. We’re the only real conservative news site in the state, and in that six years, I have never written an editorial until yesterday. And so with your permission Crom, I’m gonna read that editorial and I’d like to get your response to it.
Carmichael: Alrighty.
Leahy: Alright, here we go. Headline: Tennessee Star Editorial: Lt. Governor McNally Must Resign from Leadership Now. It is painfully obvious to anyone who has watched the confused public responses of 79-year-old Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally to the controversy surrounding his inexplicable social media postings that he’s lost a step mentally.
McNally also faces health and physical challenges, not unusual for a man his age. In February, he underwent a medical procedure to install a heart pacemaker. On Saturday, McNally was skewered mercilessly in a Saturday night live skit that went viral around the country and subjected him to withering ridicule.
Sources familiar with the Tennessee political landscape tell The Tennessee Star that McNally is simply not all there mentally and has been declining for some. Recently he has had difficulty recalling the names of colleagues he has known for years. Those sources add Lieutenant Governor McNally can no longer perform his duties as Speaker of the state Senate. and Lieutenant Governor and he must resign from both leadership roles immediately.
Now, he was elected to reelected to the state Senate this past November, and while his constituents in the Fifth State Senate District deserve representation for the balance of this session of the Tennessee General Assembly, expected to adjourn sometime in May, McNally must carefully consider whether he is capable of serving the remainder of that four-year term, which ends in January.
He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives 45 years ago in 1978. He was 34 years old at the time. He has served in the Tennessee General Assembly ever since. He was elected Speaker of the State Senate and Lieutenant Governor in 2019 and reelected in 2021 and 2020.
If Lieutenant Governor McNally cares about his constituents and the state of Tennessee, which we at The Tennessee Star believe he does, he will resign as Speaker of the State Senate and Lieutenant Governor immediately. The McNally era is over. The Lieutenant Governor can do this the easy way and resign from leadership now or he can do it the hard way.
If Lieutenant Governor McNally chooses the hard way, the outcome will be the same. He will be removed from his position of leadership, either by a vote of the Republican caucus in the state Senate or by impeachment proceedings.
It is our hope that Lieutenant Governor McNally and those who advise him will choose the easy way and he will resign his leadership position immediately. And I signed that in my capacity, Michael Patrick Leahy as editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Crom, that was our first editorial – and so far, only editorial – at The Tennessee Star. Your thoughts?
Carmichael: I saw the piece on Saturday Night Live and I didn’t see it because I watch Saturday Night Live, but you sent it to me.
Leahy: I sent you the three-and-a-half-minute clip.
Carmichael: And I watched it. And my first reaction to it was, well, this, this, this must be a gross exaggeration, and those tweets must be fake. Well, they weren’t. I was surprised and confounded. And as I’ve also learned and as you have pointed out in the editorial is Randy McNally is no longer the person he used to be.
Leahy: And that’s sad.
Carmichael: It’s sad that he’s not the person he used to be, but Tennessee deserves a person in that in that particular position who has all of his faculties and is thinking clearly because our state requires that. He served 45 years.
Leahy: That’s a long time.
Carmichael: And that’s a very long time.
Leahy: And he’s had a strong record over that period of time and has served his constituents well.
Carmichael: This isn’t a condemnation of his record until recently. What he did recently is inexplicable.
Leahy: It’s inexplicable
Carmichael: It’s also bizarre.
Leahy: It’s telling.
Carmichael: And so for that reason, I hope as your editorial suggests, that he takes the honorable way out as the head of the Senate. You said through when?
Leahy: His term ends in January 2027.
Carmichael: Then he should also consider resigning his senate seat but not during this session.
Leahy: He doesn’t need to resign this session from the Senate seat.
Carmichael: Right. But from the Senate leadership. He should withdraw.
Leahy: That’s what he should do. The problem is if you’ve been in power, even if you’re not all there…
Carmichael: Now, let me ask you a question. You said there are a number of different ways that this session is going to last for another six weeks.
Leahy: Six to eight weeks.
Carmichael: Six to eight weeks. So let’s say that he doesn’t resign, when is the person who holds that position elected to that position? Is it the beginning of each session?
Leahy: The Speaker of both the state senate, who is also our lieutenant governor under our constitution, and the person who would succeed the governor, if the governor is, you know, incapacitated or leaves office for whatever reason. And then the Speaker of the House, they’re all elected at the beginning of the session.
Carmichael: Of each session?
Leahy: Yes. Of each session for a two-year term.
Carmichael: Is the second year next year?
Leahy: Yes. So if they came back in January of next year, and he still was Speaker of the state Senate, they’d have to go through a process to bring it to the state clerk and bring up a special vote on whether to keep him.
Carmichael: Is that an impeachment or a special vote?
Leahy: There are two elements. They could actually go through the process right now in this session to remove him as the Speaker of the State Senate and Lieutenant Governor.
But that would require a vote and they’d have to put it before the clerk of the State Senate who I think reports to the Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker. So that would be problematic. It could happen. They could remove him now by a vote of the state Senate. There would have to be some machinations going on.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Randy McNally” by Adam Kleinheider. CC BY-SA 4.0. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Andre Porter. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael last evening, Tucker Carlson started his show talking about how the White House and maybe some other groups were awarded the International Woman of the Year Award to a man and he talked about what, what does that mean. And I thought about it, I know we’ve all heard the story about the fellow whose wife is out of town on business and he’s in bed in his own home with somebody else, and the wife comes home early and walks in the door and catches him.
And he says, honey, are you gonna believe what I’m about to tell you? Or are you gonna believe those lying eyes of yours? And that’s the world we live in today. You have the Biden administration saying that the southern border is secure. We have, what’s her name, the French woman?
Pierre says that fentanyl is now the least problem we’ve had in decades. And then you have Biden saying inflation is not a problem. Our economy is in great shape. The list of falsehoods goes on and on, and they’re just brazen. And so it is unsurprising that the White House in a very solemn ceremony would present a man with the award of International Woman of the Year.
And the thing that’s interesting to me is I wonder where in the world are women’s organizations. The ones that claim to have fought so hard for women’s rights, they’re now taking a backseat. And here’s what I predict will happen. Not that long ago, a few years, John McEnroe was on a television set and they were talking about Serena Williams and there was a female commentator on there who was a woman but not a tennis player, not a professional tennis player.
And John McEnroe said there’s no doubt in anybody who knows tennis mind that Serena Williams is the greatest female player to ever play the game. And the woman on there said why don’t you just say that she’s the greatest player to ever play the game?
And McInroy was startled by the comment and he said because she’s not. She’s the greatest female player. If she played against men, she’d be ranked about 700th in the world. He said she wouldn’t be a starter. She wouldn’t even make a men’s college tennis team.
But she is a great tennis player in her own right. And so that’s the tip of the iceberg of this stuff where somebody says something that is just brazenly false and then is incredibly offended when people don’t agree. And that’s the world we live in today. The stock market is not in good shape. The stock market is down off of where it was when Biden took office.
It’s been as high as 36,000. It’s down to 32,000; it’s really close. What I’m talking about in just the Dow, other stocks have fallen much, much more. And if you take into account the inflation, that 32,000 is really probably closer to 24,000. So stocks have lost, from a value standpoint, probably a third of their value.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the French lady came out today and claimed their stocks are currently at an all-time. And the press would say, hey, yay. Did you hear that? Stocks are at an all-time high! And so we’re living in a world where Biden now claims he’s a capitalist.
Then he comes out with a budget where he is taxing anything that moves at incredibly high rates and nobody in the media except the relatively few people who are rational and logical are calling Biden out for this. It’ll be fascinating to see what happens as Biden runs for reelection.
He will continue to make statements that are verifiably, 100% false, and he will still get away with it with the media. The question is whether or not the voters are going to believe him or believe their lying eyes.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Joe Biden” by The White House. Background Photo “Election Day” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
