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The Resurrection of Jesus Is the Most Important Event in History


By: Tyler O’Neil / @Tyler2ONeil / March 26, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/26/easter-resurrection-jesus-most-important-event-history/

Three crosses on Golgatha and an empty tomb with a shroud and a rock pulled across the tomb entrance
The Resurrection of Jesus is the most important event in world history, because if the disciples didn’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity wouldn’t have changed the world. (Photo: Getty Images)

Christians around the world will commemorate the most important event in our faith’s history this Sunday, but the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just important to those who believe a Nazarene who walked the earth 2,000 years ago is the Son of God. The secular world’s history also turns on this pivotal event, which inspired so much progress that we take for granted today.

Christianity turned the values of the Pagan Roman world upside-down. The Romans considered the early Christians subversives—many called them “atheists” because they didn’t worship any pagan gods—and put them to death for refusing to worship the emperor. After some emperors adopted the faith, Emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism, but lamented that the Christian ethic had transformed the empire.

“It is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism,” Julian wrote to a pagan priest of Galatia in 362 A.D. Those who believed in the Resurrection established the first hospitals, and Christianity spread rapidly during Roman plagues, as pagans fled the cities, but Christians stayed and tended to the sick, risking death but saving souls.

Rodney Stark, a now-deceased social sciences professor at Baylor University and author of the book “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success,” told PJ Media in 2017 that without the Resurrection, “we would still be in a world of mystery and probably in a world of repressive empires.”

“Remember, at the dawn of history, people didn’t live in really tiny countries. They lived under huge, huge empires, nasty ones,” the professor added. He argued that Christianity historically has been the driving force behind limited government, science, capitalism, the abolition of slavery, medicine, organized charities, and more—and that Christianity would have been impossible without the belief in the Resurrection.

According to the four Gospel narratives, Jesus’ followers were quick to abandon their rabbi after his excruciating and humiliating death at Golgatha. Something convinced the same Peter who denied Jesus three times to later go to his own painful death saying that Jesus is the Messiah. In I Corinthians 15:17, the Apostle Paul wrote, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.”

1. Universities and Science

While many consider faith and science to be inherently incompatible, Stark noted that Christianity provides the worldview that makes science comprehensible.

“In the rest of the world, it’s thought that the universe is far too mystical to be worth thinking about,” much less experimenting on, Stark explained. But “in the West, the universe was created by a rational God, and consequently it runs by rules and, therefore, it makes sense to try to understand and discover the rules.”

Christians believe that a rational God created an ordered cosmos and created human beings in his image, enabling them to think his thoughts after him.

Modern universities grew out of the cathedral schools of the Middle Ages, and a bishop near the university at Paris made a surprising move in 1277. The bishop condemned certain ideas as anathema, among them the idea that the universe is eternal and could not have been different. These ideas, promulgated by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (whom both the Muslim world and the university students held in extremely high regard), discouraged experimentation. If mere deductive reasoning could reveal the full truth of the cosmos, then there was no need to examine the world to test different hypotheses.

By condemning this idea, the bishop paradoxically helped free science from the shackles of Aristotelian thought.

2. Free Markets

It is hard to overstate just how wealthy modern Americans are in comparison to most human beings throughout history. Inflation is rising and it is increasingly difficult to afford a home, but Americans still enjoy the conveniences of indoor plumbing, heating and cooling, rapid transportation, refrigerators and microwave ovens, and endless options for learning and entertainment via the internet and electronic devices.

The term capitalism may be controversial, but the free market complexity that unleashed this jaw-dropping prosperity and innovation deserves respect and protection. While the German sociologist Max Weber famously traced capitalism back to the “Protestant work ethic,” Stark found an earlier source—the Catholic monasteries in the Middle Ages.

Catholic monasteries set up a complex network of lending at interest, and they also changed the narrative on commerce. “In almost all known societies at that time, commerce was degraded. It was thought to be nothing a gentleman would have any connection to,” Stark explained. Yet “Christian theologians, who had taken vows of poverty, nonetheless worked out that commerce was legitimate.”

The growth of complex markets took centuries, and some of it did tie in to darker chapters of world history.

3. The Abolition of Slavery

In one form or another, slavery appears in almost every human society, and if slaves ever succeed in overthrowing their masters, they often turn their former masters into slaves.

“It was only in the West that a society has ever overcome slavery, except when it’s forced by outside forces,” Stark said. Christianity inspired the “only civilization that has ever discovered within itself that slavery is immoral and gotten rid of it.”

Medieval Europe first eliminated slavery, often in fits and starts, and occasionally returning to the practice through trade. Slavery and the slave trade returned in force during the Age of Exploration, but in the 1800s, abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe (and John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace”) led Britain and America in abolishing chattel slavery outright.

Abolitionists like them drew deep inspiration from the Christian belief that all humans are made in the image of God, and they deeply believed in the Resurrection of Jesus.

The New Testament does not require Christians to outlaw slavery, but outlawing slavery is the logical conclusion of key Christian doctrines. The Apostle Paul urged Philemon to free his former slave Onesimus. Paul also wrote to the Galatians that, when it comes to the grace of God in salvation, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

4. Limited Government

Most Americans today have no concept of how united religion and government have been in world history. In ancient Egypt, Pharaohs claimed to be gods on Earth, and in ancient Mesopotamia, kings built large temples to their gods in part to maintain their legitimacy. The three-generation Kim family in control of North Korea perpetuates the idea that the supreme ruler is god.

Christianity wrested ultimate power away from political rulers, teaching that God held the ultimate authority. St. Augustine divided the world into the “City of Man” and the “City of God,” emphasizing the independence of the life of faith and service from the concerns of power and everyday life.

Civil society grew and flourished because Christians believed both in helping the poor and in working together outside of government institutions. According to David Brooks’ 2007 book “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism,” conservatives in strong families who attend church and earn their own paychecks are most likely to give to charity.

While Jesus famously told his disciples to pay taxes to the government, he also drew an enormously important distinction. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17) didn’t just mean “pay your taxes.” It also meant that Christians—who are made in God’s image as coins were made in Caesar’s image—owe their ultimate loyalty to God, not to the state.

The early settlers to America and the Founders employed these principles in government. The Declaration of Independence grounds Americans’ right to revolt from Britain in “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” The First Amendment forbids Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion or abridging the free exercise thereof,” not because religion is unimportant, but because religion is far more important than the government.

This separation marks Christian civilization apart from the despotisms of the ancient world and from the communist and fascist totalitarianisms of the 20th century. Civil societies exist in other parts of the world as well, but Christianity provides a unique justification for subordinating state power to other concerns.

Does All This Suggest the Resurrection Is True?

These and other benefits of Christian civilization extend far beyond those who believe in Jesus’ Resurrection, and these benefits do not erase the many sins and deceptions perpetrated in the name of Christianity over the centuries. However, they do illustrate the side-effects of faith in Jesus, which calls Christians to become the “salt of the Earth” and the “light of the world.”

If the Holy Spirit is working in Christian churches, the blessings of this faith will spill over to those who do not accept the Gospel.

These blessings are exactly what we should look for, supposing the Resurrection is true.

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Pastor ‘Exiles’ Family to Kenya to Escape Canadian Persecution of Christians


BY: JOY PULLMANN | JULY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/24/pastor-exiles-family-to-kenya-to-escape-canadian-persecution-of-christians/

Harold and Elise Ristau

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A Canadian pastor has “exiled” his family to Kenya after his government invoked emergency war measures to punish citizens who attended a protest where he prayed and sang the national anthem. Harold Ristau, a decorated veteran and seminary professor, participated in the “trucker convoy” against lockdowns last February, when The Federalist interviewed him last. He is now party to a lawsuit arguing the government’s response to Covid that included treating dissent as terrorism violated Canadians’ fundamental rights.

“The fight is far from over,” said Marty Moore, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which is litigating Ristau’s case. More than 14 months after the protest, police arrested another convoy leader this May. Lockdown litigation will likely continue for several more years, Moore said. The same is true across the West.

For peaceably assembling to petition his government for one day last year, Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his retirement nest egg, kids’ college funds, and other life savings. Ristau says he’s also experienced serious damage to his reputation, career, and friendships after the government used anti-terrorism measures against peaceful protesters.

“There’s no protection, if a pandemic started tomorrow, from future mandates. So that’s why I was really open to coming here,” his wife, Elise Ristau, said, sitting beside her husband in a recent video interview from Kenya.

Besides dealing with overbearing health restrictions, their children were mocked at school for their family’s religious and political views, Elise Ristau told The Federalist. After enduring more than two years of severe social and government repression, the Ristaus moved outside Nairobi with their five children last August.

“I don’t know that I can go back and be a Christian in Canada. So that’s why we’re here in Kenya,” Harold Ristau said. There, the former chaplain with a Ph.D. in philosophy trains Kenyan pastors at the Lutheran School of Theology.

Confiscating Dissenters’ Life Savings

Government use of “debanking” to punish dissent is growing in the West. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government used it on essentially every convoy participant authorities could identify, said Moore.

“As soon as they knew your name if you were on the ground [protesting] in Ottawa, they froze your bank account,” Moore told The Federalist. “…The federal government met with the banks, they gave the [protesters’] names to the banks, and the banks were then pushed to freeze the bank accounts of anyone with that name in their banks. It was a fascist collaboration.”

Right-leaning British politicians including Brexit leader Nigel Farage recently told the public banks have closed their accounts over their political views.

In May, American whistleblowers disclosed the FBI obtained, without any warrants, “a huge list” of citizens’ private banking data in its Jan. 6, 2021 capitol riot investigation. Investigators targeted any American who legally bought a firearm using a Bank of America account all the way back to the 1990s, the whistleblower testified.

Treating a Veteran Like a Terrorist

After the Canadian government announced it would freeze the bank accounts of convoy protesters and their mostly small-dollar donors without legal due process, rumors of bank runs spread. Multiple large Canadian banks appeared to shut down online operations soon after the announcement. Elise withdrew their family’s savings that Friday, too, she and Harold said. Like thousands of Canadians, they had donated to the convoy. Yet Ristau was the only one of the four plaintiffs in his lawsuit whose accounts were not frozen. He thinks it’s because of his military record.

“Some of the measures that were at least attempted to be invoked are the kind of measures you find to freeze terrorist financing,” Moore noted. “So peaceful protesters were the equivalent of terrorists and the government leaned on banks in the guise of a national emergency to freeze their bank accounts.”

Leftist activists also filed a class-action lawsuit against every Canadian who donated to the convoy. It seeks $300 million in damages. When before the convoy Canada experienced multiple race protests that included violence against stores and police, no class action was filed.

Christians Assisting Government Persecution

Canadian lockdowns kept gyms, restaurants, and liquor stores open but closed churches. Leftist protesters were allowed to yell and sing without masks, and the prime minister kneeled to them, all while provinces banned Christians from singing and chanting in church for years.

Rev. Johannes Nieminen wasn’t allowed to cross provincial borders to perform his pastoral duties, while other Canadians could do so for work, he told The Federalist. After he was denied border entry several times, he said, police finally let him through — but told him he wasn’t allowed to meet with parishioners or hold church services.

“If I’m going to go to the grocery store for physical food, I’m going to the church for spiritual food. If I’m going to the doctor’s office for physical medicine, I’m going to church for the medicine of immortality,” Nieminen said. His denomination believes Jesus Christ’s body and blood are physically present in the wine and bread of communion, and that Christians are commanded to physically eat these — impossible without gathering in person.

Until moving to pastor in New Mexico this summer, Nieminen was clergy in the same denomination as Ristau, the Lutheran Church Canada. He said lockdowns sharply divided many churches, and even though most Covid measures are now lifted, church leaders have largely failed to seek reconciliation and repentance, as commanded in the Bible.

“We need to repent. There’s been crazy division here, and we need to actually talk about it,” he said.

State-Run Western Churches

Nieminen said pastors who obeyed the government to treat churches worse than liquor stores and gyms taught lay people church is non-essential or can be conducted online. The Bible commands keeping a day of worship, meeting in person, singing hymns and psalms, and physically receiving the bread and wine of communion. Christians have done all these every week since the time of Christ.

Communion is a “sacrament,” an action God commands that produces faith and eternal salvation. Only pastors can deliver it, a tradition going back to Christ’s commissioning of His apostles. In all the great pandemics of history, priests and pastors knowingly braved death to bring the sacrament to the dying desperate for the peace and unity with God it promises.

Nieminen said he saw Canadian Christians publicly plead for the sacrament amid lockdowns that nearly lasted three years. They received no response from their pastors, who told Nieminen the pleading parishioners didn’t use the “proper channels.”

“There’s that lack of trust in pastors and a church that they see as giving up on them and basically persecuting them,” Nieminen said. “…They’re being coerced by tyrants to do something against their conscience, and then they go to church and then they’re hearing the same thing from the church.”

Within days of him praying at the protest, says Harold Ristau’s sworn affidavit, fellow clergy began refusing to let him preach and to take communion with him. Some checked with superiors on whether to commune him. Refusing communion to a church member is tantamount to excommunication.

Praying at the protest “demonstrated I was this political insurrectionist” to some clergy whose beliefs about Covid were shaped by state-funded, anti-Christian media, Harold Ristau said: “Prior to Covid, everyone recognized the media were a bunch of liars who hated Christians, but with Covid suddenly we trust them entirely.”

A Political Decision, Not a Health Decision

So far, “none of the [legal] challenges to worship restrictions on church services have succeeded” in Canada, said John Sikkema, a lawyer at the nonprofit firm ARPA Canada.

“Culturally, people find going to the gym very important and less so going to church,” Sikkema noted. “Especially when some churches don’t seem to care and don’t think it’s necessary.”

To secular authorities, keeping the economy going easily trumps the church’s work of caring for human souls, Sikkema noted. That’s why they opened restaurants while restricting churches despite similar health risks: “That’s not really a health decision, it’s a political decision about what’s important to the health of your society.”

Police regularly showed up at churches on Sunday mornings and fined pastors whose parking lots had too many cars, he said. ARPA Canada and JCCF litigated a number of those cases and were often able to get pastors’ fines negotiated down to charitable donations.

Most churches that capitulated to government discrimination against Christians were already declining before lockdowns, and disproportionate percentages of their members didn’t go back to church afterward. Churches that kept to historic orthodoxy, on the other hand, tend to have recovered better from post-lockdown membership losses and many have even grown, Nieminen and Sikkema noted.

Religious Freedom Better in Africa

The difficulty of raising their children in rapidly apostatizing Western culture also affected the Ristaus’ decision to move across the globe.

“Things are normal here, people have traditional values,” Elise Ristau said of Kenya. “It’s inconceivable to think of transgender mutilation. As a mother and father, we do our very best to keep our kids Christian.”

In Canada, Christians are often required to lie or betray their faith to access government grants and licensing credentials, and avoid punishment in many professions, Sikkema said. Many Canadian doctors, lawyers, and teachers, for example, are required to endorse abortion and LGBT sexual acts. Canadian doctors and many other health care workers must help patients obtain an abortion or doctor-assisted suicide.

In 2018, Canada’s Supreme Court banned a Christian law school from opening over Christian sexual standards. The Canadian military is also working to eject chaplains over Christian sexual ethics. Just about every Canadian business sports a government-provided pride flag, Nieminen said. Churches that object to transgender mutilation of children have faced naked protesters as families arrive to worship, Sikkema said.

“Canadians are very aware that we don’t have freedom of religion, we don’t have freedom of speech, we don’t have the right to assemble if that’s in disagreement with the regime,” Nieminen said. “Pastors and teachers cannot speak about the morality of human sexuality. That is a reality Canadians live in, and I think that’s partly why they’re afraid to speak out.”

Christians Welcome in Kenya

The Ristaus had been invited to their current post before lockdowns, but Elise hadn’t wanted to uproot after moving the family so many times for Harold’s military career. They had bought land in Canada for their dream home and planted more than 1,000 trees on it.

“I had dreamed of this perfect life for myself in Canada,” Elise said. But then “there was a kind of turning point where I said, ‘We can go. Nothing is holding us here.’ It was a ‘shake the dust off our boots’ moment.”

From Toronto to Nairobi is approximately 7,500 miles. Flying commercially between the two takes 16 hours or more.

“In Kenya, I know it’s poor, and there’s corruption, but we’re not getting arrested for praying silently outside abortion clinics,” Elise said. “For a Christian in Canada, it’s pretty bleak.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her latest ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her several books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

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Joe Biden’s Green Energy Buddies Have Major Ties To Silicon Valley Bank


BY: LARRY BEHRENS | MARCH 21, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/21/joe-bidens-green-energy-buddies-have-major-ties-to-silicon-valley-bank/

President Joe Biden confers with Gov. Jared Polis before delivering remarks on Build Back Better,

The contrast couldn’t be clearer. A devastating train derailment and subsequent toxic fires rock a community in Ohio that President Trump carried by 29 points. Forty days later, President Joe Biden has yet to set foot in East Palestine despite numerous pleas from residents.

A few weeks after the train crash, news breaks about a well-connected bank few have ever heard of crumbling on a Friday afternoon. At a time of the day his supporters say he usually does nothing, Biden is in front of the television cameras telling the world that the U.S. government will bail out Silicon Valley Bank, which is located in a city Biden won by almost 50 points. Biden’s climate buddies and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wine companies are no doubt relieved.

For those keeping score: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is an emergency that requires Biden to get out of bed before 9 a.m., while the people of East Palestine continue to wait for answers.

Looking at those who work with or benefit from SVB, one begins to understand Biden’s urgency.  The White House may say climate is our worst existential crisis, but it looks like green dollars for leftists’ eco-friends required the quickest action.

It’s easy to wonder if President Biden’s actions are driven by the bank’s connection to climate companies. This article highlights a few, noting “Silicon Valley Bank served as a banker to dozens of climate and energy-tech companies, holding their cash on a day-to-day basis and issuing billions of dollars in loans in support of the type of large-scale, one-off projects that are essential to the sector.”

Read it again: Dozens of climate companies. Billions in loans. Holding their cash on a day-to-day basis. Now, it gets interesting.

Just earlier this month, SVB was one of the sponsors of “Winterfest” which billed itself as a global conference on energy transition. Another sponsor of the event was Galvanize Climate Solutions, tied to none other than billionaire Tom Steyer. Fun fact, this is the same company that also proudly had John Podesta as a “Strategic Advisor” before he took over managing the “green” money from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Steyer once played a key role on a Zoom fundraiser for Biden that raised $4 million dollars. That’s a lot of money for a single conference call. Many of the donors were from Silicon Valley and have deep pockets. That’s why it should be no surprise that when it came time to find someone to oversee $369 billion in taxpayer dollars for green investments, Biden would reach back into Steyer’s world.

Another company reported to have close ties to SVB is Lowercarbon Capital. It doesn’t take long on their website to find their managing partner is a strong Biden ally. They proudly tell you the partner is not only a longtime supporter of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, but “was on their 2020 campaign’s National Finance Committee and is a member of Climate Leaders for Biden.”

Wait, there’s more. According to the reports, another major company with ties to SVB is Sunrun Solar. The company saw money from SVB going back to 2014 and arranged for a loan of more than half a billion dollars less than three months ago.

It doesn’t take much searching to learn Sunrun’s CEO joined President Biden at the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act and gave comments in support. In fact, when Biden waived tariffs on solar components last summer, Sunrun was listed as one of the top beneficiaries.

All this government cheese would be bland without a little wine. Take a moment to appreciate Newsom’s tone-deaf actions about SVB. Not long after Biden’s announcement, Newsom heaped praise on the move, and now we’re starting to see why.

Newsom is the owner of some wine companies, and you’ll be shocked to hear those companies are reportedly held by SVB. And if you can handle one more vomit-inducing dose of hypocrisy, an SVB bank president sits on the board of a charity run by Newsom’s wife.

Joe Biden’s Climate Cult: Membership has its privileges. It’s too bad the people of East Palestine couldn’t get in on the ground level.

Larry Behrens is the Communications Director for Power The Future and has appeared on Fox News, Newsmax and One America News. You can find him on Twitter at @larrybehrens or email at larry@powerthefuture.com.

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The Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Is the Latest Reason the Uniparty Needs to Go 


BY: JOE POPULARIS | MARCH 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/14/the-silicon-valley-bank-bailout-is-the-latest-reason-the-uniparty-needs-to-go/

SVB
The politically connected received immediate relief, and everyone else is left to deal with the incoming wave of economic instability.

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Maxine Waters, Mitt Romney, President Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and most other Washington politicians agree on one thing: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) executives should lose their jobs and equity holders should lose everything, but SVB depositors should get made whole. 

“Failing to intervene and make sure depositors get all their money back will hurt normal people and destabilize the entire U.S. banking system,” they say. Not only that, but they’re assuring us this definitely isn’t a bailout! Even many on the nationalist right echoed these talking points. 

Except they are wrong. At best, they don’t understand the banking system, banking regulations, and the incentives being created here. At worst, they are — as is certainly the case for Democrats like Eric Swalwell — arguing solely for the interests of large and wealthy investment firms that had money at SVB without regard for the interests of normal working Americans. 

To understand why, we need to examine what happened with SVB in the run-up to the crisis. 

Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse

SVB has had tremendous growth over the last 10 years as the Federal Reserve’s easy money programs flooded the tech industry with cheap capital.

Banks are tasked with managing assets and liabilities. Liabilities include deposits and debt, and assets include government securities and loans. SVB’s business revolved around serving Silicon Valley’s startups and the wealthy investment funds buying and selling these startups. That meant taking in an explosion of deposits from these investment funds as cheap money from the Fed flooded in — a liability — and making loans to startups and venture capital funds with those deposits — an asset.  

But unlike most banks, where about 75 percent of the deposits are used for loans, SVB used its explosive deposit growth to plow nearly 60 percent of its assets into government securities — some treasuries but mostly mortgage-backed securities. While these securities are “safe,” meaning there is little to no default risk, these securities do move in price as interest rates change. So, most banks will hedge, or pay to remove, this interest rate risk.

The thing is, SVB’s massive bond portfolio wasn’t hedged. Put more plainly, SVB was using customer deposits to make a massive bet on lower rates. Obviously, that didn’t work out, as rates increased all of 2022. Once depositors figured out that any selling of the unhedged bond portfolio to meet depositor withdrawals would lead to big losses and be unable to cover all withdrawals, there was a rush to the exits — a bank run. 

All of this has been covered by the financial media, but two things have been left out. First, nobody knows how solid the other 40 percent of SVB’s assets, given out as loans, are. At least some of these loans were given to now-failing speculative tech or cryptocurrency firms.

Second, SVB’s bank run wasn’t the type you see in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” SVB’s depositors aren’t small business owners  — who are covered up to $250,000 by the FDIC — they are some of the most sophisticated and wealthy financiers in the world. They benefited heavily during the Fed’s easy money policies over the last 10 years, and now the reverse of these easy money policies is hurting them.

This is why the cast of characters above isn’t arguing for the FDIC-insured amounts to be met. They are specifically arguing that those with far more than the FDIC-insured amount be fully made whole. 

Not only were these depositors sophisticated, but they were also purposefully taking a risk to get a higher interest rate on their deposits at SVB. They also had every reason to know that SVB was a risky bet, as publications like Grant’s Interest Rate Observer have been warning about SVB’s portfolio of bonds for some time. It just so happens that the vast majority of these depositors are also wealthy donors to the Democrat Party and other leftist causes, increasing the political expediency of the government’s action. 

Yes, It Is a Bailout

When the Biden administration or the rest of the cast of characters insists this isn’t a bailout, they are playing word games. When they insist the taxpayer isn’t “on the hook,” that is a lie. The “taxpayer” isn’t paying, but “bank customers” across the country are. An FDIC fund that essentially taxes banks — including the small bank in your hometown — is being used. At the end of last year, the Deposit Insurance Fund had $128 billion. 

But 89 percent of SVB’s $175 billion in deposits, or $156 billion, was uninsured because it was above the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit. Depending on how bad the SVB asset write-downs are, which is yet to be determined, the insurance fund could get completely overwhelmed. Again, “bank customers” would then make up the difference. So, the fact of the matter is that working Americans are once again subsidizing a bailout of the coastal oligarchs.

This creates a terrible incentive or moral hazard, where now large, deep-pocketed entities can search out the bank with the highest return on their deposits, no matter how irresponsible that bank’s behavior, and believe they will receive their money back in the event of failure. This is also why arguing that SVB depositors suffering a small reduction in their accounts with deposits above $250,000 would lead to a banking collapse is disingenuous. The fear is that because the Democrats’ 2011 Dodd-Frank legislation created a handful of large banks that were essentially deemed “too big to fail,” then money will flow out of deposits at banks like SVB or smaller regional banks and into the too-big-to-fail banks. 

But the risks taken by SVB and its unhedged bond portfolio are extremely out of step with the rest of the U.S. banking system. If this is a risk, it could be combated in a number of ways that actually fix the fundamental problem without bailing out the rich and politically connected SVB depositors.

One solution could involve raising the amounts covered by FDIC insurance. Another solution could involve the government pledging to intervene if a run on a bank with sound financials occurred. Either way, pretending the world stops if rich SVB depositors weren’t made completely whole is not a serious position. 

Any further market mayhem only serves to prove the point. For one, the U.S. is going into a large slowdown, more is at play than the banking system, and much of the stress on the banking system is because Fed easy money policies created excess (and inequality). This will continue to be exposed in the slowdown. 

The government did the exact opposite of what it should have done. Going forward, they haven’t come out with a large enough program to solidify the system’s stability and protect responsible banks, but SVB depositors received immediate relief.

Throw the Bums Out

Said differently, the politically connected just received immediate relief from Washington, and the rest of us will be left to deal with the potential incoming wave of unemployment, market stresses, and other banking issues because none of the fundamental problems are being addressed here.

Politically, the problem is twofold. Despite being completely oligarchic, the Democrats still control much of the country’s underclass. The other junior party in this arrangement, the Republicans, practice buffet line-style libertarianism. Republicans like Romney pretend to believe in markets but always clamor to intervene when they or their friends are affected — even while they couldn’t care less about the economic problems facing their actual voting base. 

The political system of the United States is then ripe for a crackup. The solution is a radical populism that makes Donald Trump look tame by comparison. Of course, any more bank bailouts should be paid for by taxes on the rich — they are the ones who benefit, after all. And, of course, we should let SVB fail, and its depositors take a loss, even while we rush to reintroduce manufacturing jobs into the heartland. 

The government will always pick winners and losers. It’s time the roles were reversed.

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