On April 28, 2023, Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve Vice-Chair for Supervision, issued his long-awaited post-mortem of the Silicon Valley Bank failure.  The FDIC issued its post-mortem for Signature Bank the same day.  There’s a lot to unpack here, with the Barr Report running 118 pages, plus numerous supporting documents.  I’ll cover the report in…

The Federal Reserve District Banks are quasi-public entities that provide liquidity and other services to their member banks but also act as the primary federal regulator for many of those same banks.  The dual roles as a bankers’ bank and as a regulator create the potential for conflict of interest.  That conflict became apparent as…

David Letterman used to run a segment called “Brush with Greatness.”  Dave would interview members of the studio audience, who would recount a chance meeting with some celebrity.  Getting interviewed about it on national TV by David Letterman was probably a bigger deal for those folks than the original celebrity encounter. My own connections to…