David Sirota is editor-at-large at Jacobin. He edits the Lever and previously served as a senior adviser and speechwriter on Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Five years before customers fled Silicon Valley Bank en masse, federal regulators acknowledged that the nature of the bank’s deposits made it especially susceptible to such bank runs — but did nothing to reduce the risk.
In 2021, the Fed approved a merger application from Silicon Valley Bank with Boston Private Bank and Trust, believing that the newly enlarged institution presented no danger to the financial system. After SVB’s collapse, the Fed is changing its tune.
In the months before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, the bank’s lobbying groups fought a proposal requiring financial institutions to increase payments into the Deposit Insurance Fund that protects depositors from bank failures.
The news of Silicon Valley Bank’s recent collapse is dominating headlines. Just eight years ago, SVB’s president pushed legislators to exempt more midsize banks — including SVB — from regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
In the wake of a disastrous rail accident in Ohio, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg says he doesn’t have the power to compel the rail industry to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures. But he does.
By letting false friends in the GOP appeal to striking railworkers, Democrats are playing with fire.
For years, rail companies have resisted federal safety regulations to cut costs. The major train derailment in Ohio last weekend, which resulted in the emergency evacuation of residents nearby, is the fruit of such profit maximization.
The comedian, actor, and political activist Russell Brand on political polarization and how establishment voices attempt to silence dissent.
As public officials across America prepare to funnel even more of government workers’ savings to private equity moguls, they risk gambling away public retirement money as private equity values drop and industry executives continue to rake it in.
Joe Biden has repeatedly pushed to cut Social Security in the past. But a proposal to end the payroll tax exemption for the rich would bolster the crucial government service and even has Joe Manchin’s support. The president has no excuse not to support it.
After Southwest’s mass flight cancellations, liberal media refused to report on transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s failure to regulate the airlines — because media outlets now avoid journalism that could offend their audiences’ partisan loyalties.
Southwest Airlines’ flight cancellations are stranding thousands. Attorneys general have been sounding the alarm about lax airlines oversight, begging transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and Congress to crack down — to no avail.
The Democratic Party has sold out and ignored workers over and over in recent years — so much so that despite Republicans’ steadfast commitment to the rich, they’ve also made significant inroads in winning over working-class voters.
Progressive and leftist voters are always told we’re too extreme. The midterm results should quash that narrative.
Progressive Summer Lee is the Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District. A pro-Israel super PAC has spent millions to defeat her, and she says it’s because she poses “a threat to corporate interests and to corporate power.”
Democrats running in the upcoming midterms are rightfully pushing the need to protect abortion rights, but they are failing to tie that push to a populist economic message.
In the lead-up to the midterms, Americans’ number-one issue is the economy and the squeeze they’re feeling thanks to inflation. Republicans get this and are making that squeeze their top-line message. Why aren’t Democrats?
Major US health insurance companies are posting record profits while receiving most of their revenues from the government. But they’re still jacking up prices by double digits while leaving nearly half of the country underinsured or uninsured.
President Biden recently requested leniency for low-level marijuana offenders. The Republican governors who rejected that call are also getting big donations from private prison corporations.
Six Republican states are suing to stop Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan — even though a new study shows that borrowers in most of those states would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the program.