"Face the Nation" on March 19, 2023
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Great to be here.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
I think the viable question for the American people is whether or not you have a progressive prosecutor using the justice system to go after political enemies for a political splash.
And that seems to be the case here with the Manhattan DA.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
I think all options should be on the table.
There are a lot of things...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
What I need to get to the bottom of investigatively in Congress is the who, what, when, where, why, and how of these bank failures and the decisions made over...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
That's right.
And then over the -- and the decision made over the weekend. We saw a private sector response to help support a bank.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Was that a viable option last weekend? Or was there an ideological lens that prevented them from taking these institutions and making it less turbulent for America?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
We don't know that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Well, I don't have the facts on whether or not the FDIC had a viable buyer last weekend.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
We have press reports of two -- two banks that were at the table. We have comments from other bankers that they were prevented from bidding.
I don't have the facts. And until I have the facts, I'm not going to draw a conclusion, especially in a moment like this.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Well, I think we know we had a very rough week for American banking.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
And we lost -- lost confidence. And -- and I think that is -- that raises the questions of what happened last weekend.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Well, that's the first time I have heard a proposal like that.
And I have not had a single conversation with the White House or the administration about deposit insurance, changing the levels. What I will do, though, legislatively, and in an oversight function, is to determine whether or not we need to address the FDIC deposit level.
We did it after the last financial crisis...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
... raising it from $100,000 to $250,000.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
We need to understand the decisions that were made last weekend on -- from Thursday until Sunday night...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
... on whether or not there's a viable private sector solution.
We also need to understand the underlying causes of the collapse of these banks. And we're going to get to that. The question of the San Francisco Fed is a question of supervision.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
We need to get to the bottom of whether or not this is a supervisory problem, a regulatory problem, a bank mismanagement problem, perhaps all three in all -- in all -- in all frankness.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
It never ends.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
I think everyone's preaching their book. And that's what we heard in your first segment.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Everyone is preaching their book. And their book is, well, if they thought it was a problem a month ago, they apply it to this circumstance. That's happening on both sides of the aisle.
But when it comes to the question of ESG and these initiatives, my fellow...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Social and governance.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Right?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Yes.
So, there is -- there has been a lot of political debate about that. There is substance here. And if the management of these institutions was much more concerned about politics or the environmental or social goods, rather than the governance regulations, ensuring you had a capable board, you had proper oversight of people's deposits, then this shows they had mismanagement.
So, I think there are -- there are natural questions that we have...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Yes. And you had very few people that had banking expertise on the board of the bank. So, there are some questions, natural questions we should raise. And we should...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
But, as I said, whatever your book of business was as a politician a month ago...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
... a year ago is applied to this general circumstance.
What I'm trying to do is get to the details of what happened...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
... and have whether -- well, and then determine whether or not there's a proper legislative response.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
But when -- when you have a hammer, you look at the world as a nail.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
And that's what we see out of politicians.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Well, it's something I'm going to look at -- look at and consider.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
No, it does -- it doesn't.
But in response to these things, we know that there are known failures of this. We saw, for instance, deposits perform in a different way than regulators assumed, that uninsured deposits left at a more rapid rate than the insured deposits. That's a new phenomenon.
When we have the speed of Twitter and a bank run, and the speed of electronic banking, those things are things that we need to look at legislatively and regulatorily.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
The question of performance of bank executives, we certainly need to look at that and make sure...
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
... that they are aligned with consumer protection and depositor interests.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source