During his “My Take,” Wednesday “Varney & Co.” host Stuart Varney addressed the challenges facing Biden as U.S. financial worries heat up after banking fears spread across global markets. Does the president “stop the rot” with a bailout, or does the government let banks fail?
STUART VARNEY: First thing this morning, all seemed to be well. The banking crisis appeared to have been short-lived.
Wrong.
At 5 a.m. eastern time, all hell broke loose. It started in Europe.
Credit Suisse, a troubled investment bank, saw its stock price tumble more than 20% after the Saudis said, “you’re not getting any more money from us.” Immediately, the other big European banks tumbled.
The crisis had come back.
CREDIT SUISSE SHEDS NEARLY 25%, KEY BACKER SAYS NO MORE MONEY
Then, around 6 a.m. eastern, Larry Fink, the powerful chair of BlackRock, issued a dire warning. He said inflation is going to stick around at the 3 to 4% level for a period of years.
And he said there’s going to be more trouble for banks that invested in long-term bonds and are underwater on those investments.
That’s why America’s big banks are now feeling the heat, and when the selling moves to the so-called money center banks, it moves to the whole stock market as well.
The Dow, the S&P and the NASDAQ are all down.
So again, within a day, the financial landscape has shifted, and as it shifts, so does the betting on the Federal Reserve.
You hear it all the time. How can they raise rates in a crisis like this and how can they not raise rates when inflation is still at a high level?
We’re going back to the questions asked during the last financial crisis. Should we bail out any bank with taxpayer money? It was wildly unpopular last time around.
If it comes to it, how do you stop the rot without a bailout? Or do you just let it all tumble and sort it out later?
That is an economic question: Bailout or bust? And a political question: Would Biden risk the inevitable backlash from a bailout?