The 'buck does not stop here'

Sports world could be impacted and remembering Joe Pepitone

Good morning, all. I hope your week is off to a better start than the banking industry.

For some time I wrestled with writing about current events. This is, after all, a sports newsletter. Besides, I hosted a drive-time talk show on a Hartford radio station for years, whose subject matter was mostly politics. In other words, been there, done that. However, I can no longer keep my power dry. If the banking industry goes into a tailspin, soaring gas and grocery prices will be the least of our worries. And the sports world? Expect seismic changes.

On Friday Silicon Valley Bank went kaput, as the federal government shut it down. It is never a good thing, when people make a run on a bank and more than $40B was withdrawn by bank depositors, before the feds stepped in and shut the doors. I don’t know about you, but for me runs on banks evoke images of the Great Depression. On Saturday morning, I said to some friends, watch the media and a certain political segment blame this on the previous president. I was hoping the current president would not be among those joining in that chorus. I mean, what happened to “The Buck Stops Here.”

Early Sunday morning, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin went on TV to say taxpayers would not be bailing out SVB. I felt about as confident in that statement as someone predicting the New York Yankees would win the 2023 World Series, as evidenced by the tweet I sent out:

By Sunday night the federal government was announcing all deposits in SVB would be guaranteed, even beyond the FDIC’s $250,000 limit. We were also reminded taxpayers would not be bailing out the bank. At this point, I was marveling over the magical attributes of the current occupant in the White House and his ability to produce billions of dollars out of thin air without using tax revenue. It was sort of like the carte blanche program rolled out for Ukraine without approval of the U.S. Congress. What a miracle worker.

By Monday morning the talk was no longer “we will not be using taxpayers money” to “the taxpayers will not be losing money on this deposit guarantee.” We also learned the feds had closed Signature Bank, following another bank run. It is the third largest bank failure in the history of the U.S. As of this writing, the stock market has halted trading on stocks for 30 banks. Regional banks are getting hammered. Yikes!

This brings us to President Joe Biden. I don’t know if he was on vacation at his Wilmington, DE compound and rushed back to Washington, D.C. or what. He has a tendency to spend a lot of downtime. I believe more than a quarter of his time as president has been spent at his vacation homes. No big deal, incidentally, when you have a ‘D’ after your name. (By the way, we are told he has three homes. Not bad for someone who has spent a lifetime on the federal government payroll.)

Anyway, I thought it was a good move by our Commander in Chief to speak to the nation, before the stock market opened. You know, attempt to calm down the jittery financial world. That was until he blamed former President Trump for the bank failures, without mentioning the specific regulations that led to the failures. ( Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat who voted for the new regulations in 2018, stunned ABC’s Martha Raddatz, another Democratic apologist, when she tried to take the same tact.)

What does it say about this president and this administration for not changing those regulations, if they thought they would derail the financial industry? He and his party had control of the White House and the congress for two years! So much for “The Buck Stops Here.” So much for being the president, who was going to unify the country.

I’ll give any president some slack for blaming a previous administration, especially from an opposing party, when things go haywire, one, two or even three months into a term. But we are now in year three of the Biden administration and it is getting stale to blame the prior president for the current president’s failures, no matter what the Democratic pollsters may be telling him.

It is also getting stale every time this president makes a statement, uses generalities to blame the prior president, then walks out of the room without taking reporters’ questions. In fact, it is downright unconscionable that this president, now in year three, has yet to have a true, free-wheeling press conference.

What is going to change? Probably nothing. Expect the usual media onslaught about this being “Trump’s fault!” Meanwhile, I worry about the financial underpinnings of this country and am very concerned about a president in his 80s being the supposed leader of the free world. I know age is always an issue, when a Republican is in office, but would somebody use common sense here and admit that the job of President of the United States is too taxing for anyone in their 80s, whether that person is a Republican or Democrat? Don’t hold your breath. These days common sense is in short supply.

Thanks for reading my rant and if you don’t think it is not connected to sports think again. If the banking industry starts flailing, sports will be next. For sure, sports will survive; it did during the Great Depression. We just won’t recognize the landscape, but we will recognize the Second Great Depression.

Remembering Joe Pepitone

The New York Yankees announced on Monday the passing of fan favorite Joe Pepitone, who played for the club in the 1960s and later worked for the club in several capacities. On Aug. 1, 2001 Pepitone visited Jeff Dooley and me in the New Britain Rock Cats broadcast booth for an inning and relived some memories.

As always, thank you for subscribing to the newsletter and have a terrific week.

SPORTSCASTER DAN