There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.
Washington Irving, “The Adventure of the German Student,” Tales of a Traveller, by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.(1824).
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Washington Irving
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published.
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Watch: The Usual Madness(es)
Just how crazy can our Clownshow Partisanship get?
Well, current news stories reveal just how crazy it’s become.
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George Meredith
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.
George Meredith, The Egoist (1879), seventh chapter.
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House of Lords
On March 19, 1649, England’s House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England.”
This was during Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, after the execution of Charles I. The House of Lords did not again meet until the Convention Parliament of 1660, under the Restoration of the monarchy.
Not the March Madness!
Paul explains:
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W. H. H. MacKellar
Optimism laid down the railroad, but pessimism made it practicable with the air brake and the block-signal system. Optimism designed a ship to sail daringly into the skies — and fall perhaps at times. So pessimism designed the parachute.
W. H. H. MacKellar, The Rotarian (May 1939).
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Sunflower & Hawaii
March 18 marks the ninth anniversary of the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, wherein students occupied the Taiwanese legislature to block a trade agreement between Taiwan and China, which the public came to believe gave too much economic leverage to China, a power that regularly threatens to invade the free and democratic island nation.
The event awakened a deep concern about China’s dangerous encroachment as well as further impressing a “Taiwanese identity.” The protest may have influenced the 2014 Umbrella movement in Hong Kong as well as leading to electoral victories in Taiwan for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in 2016 and again in 2020. This website salutes the Sunflower Student Movement and hopes this date may be long remembered as the day the modern world first stood up and said “No” to totalitarian China.
On March 18, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill enabling Hawaii to become the 50th state in the Union. The official day of statehood was set for (and became) August 21 of that year.
The statehood signing occurred exactly 85 years after The Kingdom of Hawaii formalized its treaty with the U. S. establishing exclusive trading rights.
Last week’s collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank gets more interesting with each revelation. But one of them is probably not that it was “woke.”
Contrary to rumor, I see no real evidence that SVB gave millions to Black Lives Matter. The bank did pledge $50 million towards an internal program dubbed “Access to Innovation.” This, we are told, “sought to connect women, Black people, and Latinos with startup funding, networking, and leadership development in the venture capitalist ecosystem.”
Sounds great in a press release, though what it has to do with making profits is a bit hard to determine.
Very feel-good, not very bottom-line.
And that’s where the bank failed, on the bottom line.
Its clientele was concentrated in one industry, which has been hit by rising interest rates. Thus stressed, it was exceptionally prone to “bank run” pressures. Its core asset class was long-term Treasury Bonds, whose value decreased with rising interest rates — and these were not hedged.
As Forbes put it, “Whether it was fully or semi-deliberate, Silicon Valley Bank was betting heavily on interest rates not rising.”
An extremely bad bet.
But you can see why the bankers would make it, right? Why wouldn’t they expect the giveaway mentality of Zero Interest Rates Forever?
Their hopes dashed, they nevertheless turned to their friends . . . in power. The Biden Administration that failed to keep interest rates down then pledged to cover SVB’s clients — the super-rich corporations that true progressive Democrats pretend to hate for all their “profits” and “under-taxed” income — well above the FDIC-insured levels.*
We may learn real data about the banks’ wokeness levels, rather than mere rumor, but the bedrock truth reveals itself as all-too-familiar: it’s all about monetary policy.
That is, the “woke” ideas of a century ago, when the Progressives’ beloved Federal Reserve was created.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Like Signature Bank, which was closed on Sunday, the overwhelming bulk of SVB’s deposits were uninsured by FDIC.
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Immanuel Kant
Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue as translated by Mary J. Gregor (1964), p. 93.